Urgent Delivery: The Chase
by Lord Kelvin
Summary: GUN capture Shadow. The convoy is set to reach his final destination. Sonic can't let that happen to a friend. With Eggman and Metal Sonic playing a mind game of their own, a difficult mission enters Super Hard Mode where even the heroes cheat.
1. All the Aces

Author's note: The story is pre-written, so it will have an intensive publishing schedule. I suggest subscribing from the start to assure you don't get lost in updates.

Posted in support of the Kelviniana forum writing challenge. Inspired by _Radical Train – The Chase_.

Disclaimer: Sonic the Hedgehog, related characters and locales are copyright SEGA.

_**URGENT DELIVERY: THE CHASE**_

**Chapter 1: All the Aces**

"Package is secure. We're moving out."

"Copy that, Little Moth. You are clear for phase three. Command will enable fail-safe mode once you ping from Station Square. Advance group B took care of incoming traffic. End transmission."

Little Moth gulped as the truck accelerated. Months of preparation in complete secrecy with the best human agents the organisation had on its roster brought them to this moment. Shadow's successful capture raised cheers across the globe and now he was the lynchpin to assuring safe delivery. Little Moth didn't know what exactly they had in store for the potentially indestructible hedgehog, but that wasn't his concern.

Knowing the Ultimate Life Form lay suspended several metres behind him was the crux of the matter. The freshly paved road leading out of the jungle in Mystic Ruins assured a smooth ride despite the armoured eighteen-wheeler's massive size. GUN cut no corners during the assignment and even converted the only railway track connecting the jungle area to civilisation solely for the convoy's use.

Civilians thought it was closed for repairs. Command made sure leak-prone Mobians inspected the work in progress by following a fake trail. They even helped file a court case on the grounds of illegal rainforest clearcutting against a non-existing construction company and were now acting as civilian witnesses in front of the real actors.

Such deviltry brought a smile under Little Moth's high-tech helmet. Back in the day, he'd have sold the intel to Eggman, but GUN cut no corners. A blank cheque awaited everyone in the convoy.

As they sped through the converted rail tunnel, a security camera counted the vehicles on the other side. Four armoured motorcycles spearheaded the delivery team with an identical number guarding the rear. Two pairs of off-road vehicles equipped with experimental Chaos cannons stood between the light units. Little Moth's truck had a special escort of two multi-purpose GUN trailers proven trusty against hedgehog foes in the past. Even though Shadow's vessel had more than enough tech to repel any physical and Chaos attack, these two trucks offered strategic field sensors, secure communication and heavy weapons personnel ready to despatch any obstacle, man-made or otherwise.

Where computers failed, humans were to succeed. Every road vehicle had a real pilot equipped with a side arm and a jetpack. They knew locations of reinforcements along the route in case non-essential personnel expired during an EMP or nuclear attack.

The mission had hunter drone assistance for maximum security. Stealth beetles formed a solid shield above Shadow's containment truck. The vehicle could deploy an extra barrage of beetles as well as standard repair robots to delay a minute security breach. Little Moth was authorised to use them at will.

Special assignments like this one usually entailed emergency procedures with...advanced weaponry. The pilot had a secret urge to test the ones fitted into his truck. He's never seen them in action. Nobody except the scientists back in that old space station did. The rest was based on theory because GUN couldn't get the final ingredients until hours before the mission. Shadow could act as an ingredient, too, encased in heavy ionising liquid that drained excess power.

A regular person would have grown a second head and popped like a gigantic pimple if splashed with it, but not Shadow. That freak could withstand anything GUN had thrown at him so far. The mistake they've been making thus far was separating the shots. Combined, multi-layered and radiating energies of dangerous or unknown origin, these shots made enough damage to subdue the rogue.

Which was why Little Moth wore tinfoil underwear that day. Specialists said he was safe in his seat as the brilliant white cistern holding Shadow had walls thick enough to prevent leaks. In the event of a leak, which was impossible to begin with, the substances would drain from behind the vehicle, killing any pursuer as well as melting the road surface while tiny repair bots attended repairs. The truck lacked rear motion, so his jewels were safe, they claimed.

Still, they recommended full body armour with a hazmat seal and emergency beacons. None of the agents argued with that. These saved a few lives during part two of the operation: capture team had most of their limbs fractured, rather than torn off as it normally happened during special missions. The agents' families would live comfortable lives from now on.

Little Moth wanted to be a part of the comfort, so he ordered the front guard to burn rubber and floored the accelerator to suit. This would be a speedy delivery.

Not everyone was happy with his decision. A bald mustachio person grumbled sourly as he hurried to dress up deep in Final Egg. He's lost one of his silver buttons and couldn't keep track of the convoy while searching for the insolent pin.

"Narrate the video feed for me, Metal. I'll be right back," he said, squinting at the floor.

"Negative."

Eggman grumbled, but didn't get back up. Metal Sonic was sensitive enough to hear a whisper. "That's an order! Besides, you don't have the keys to break into the containment vehicle."

"The second statement is inaccurate."

"You have schematics used in the outer casing. It'd take you two hours to breach, and we have no idea what lies beyond that."

"The second statement is inaccurate. Again."

"Success!" Eggman boasted when he found the discarded button. He was now ready to conquer, in style.

Metal Sonic said nothing. His dry mockery subroutine told him the doctor lost this round.

"Which battle goggles to pick… Metal, you're not narrating! My pawn armada _will_ get lost in the jungle and not help you at all if you don't help me out."

"Tree. Tree. Paved road. Meat shield. Video feed distorted. Washing meat shield away. Present species of the tree?" Metal droned. He paused for a moment, rewinding the conversation, and added: "Tree number two."

"How far are you from the convoy?"

"Thirty klicks."

"How far is that in time?"

Metal cursed in binary before producing a response: "This unit is not a GPS terminal."

Eggman grinned. He had plenty of distance to annoy Metal. Keeping the robot's circuits busy reduced the possibility of betrayal, a very resource-consuming routine. The maniac cracked his knuckles, fully prepared for battle, and fired up the Egg Hornet's engines. Slim and speedy was the way to go.

Elsewhere, a familiar blue hedgehog used a different technique to keep aware of the big picture. Tails wanted to go with him, but Sonic insisted on keeping the fox in charge of the math back at the workshop.

Neither of them knew what exactly happened or how it happened so quickly without them knowing. Rouge routinely informed them of anything evil GUN could be up to. While not a reliable source on her own, they were sure the military thought of Shadow as an ally more than a threat. A biological weapon of mass destruction that could use Chaos Control against terrorist groups was the best thing that happened to them since… Sonic wasn't good with dates, yet Tails couldn't help him with this one.

Sonic stopped by a clearing within the jungle. It looked like a makeshift camp. He couldn't find any trash or building materials. Swept clean, no doubt. They must have moved out very recently, too. Caterpillar tracks still dug deep into the mud. No signs of a fireplace. Had Sonic come a few hours later, local showers would have hidden the remaining evidence.

Of the camp, at least. He broke a spindash through the bushes half-way to avoid falling into a nearby crater. Sonic pressed back against a tree for balance, gawking at the emptiness within an otherwise peaceful landscape.

One could fit a football stadium in that hole and still have room for all the GUN agents with flamethrowers. They were burning something Sonic couldn't identify from afar in the blast hole. He could, however, see a train of loaded landfill vehicles on the other side. All of them were ready to dump the cargo into the crater.

"Tails, you see this?" Sonic whispered. GUN were far on the other side, but he couldn't take chances.

"Hold on. I'm zooming in," the voice in his ear replied. "Don't shake your head like that, Sonic. They're jamming my main frequency, so the feed is awful. Hey, can you peek out of the bush a little?"

Sonic crouched as he leaned forward. Tails' communicator let him see which part the fox wanted a close-up of. GUN operatives were taking shiny plates of molten material into a heavy dart-shaped transport. They seemed to be in a hurry.

"What are they up to?" Sonic asked.

"I don't know…there's no way that machine gets out of the crater. The walls are too steep."

Tails fell silent for a moment as the vehicle started rumbling and bore into the ground. They were using an underground transport to get the molten slabs out undetected. But why? The fox didn't have much time to ponder because landfill trucks started pouring soil mixed with waste into the crater. Judging by the queue, they'd be done in a record time.

Sonic shivered in disgust. "If Rouge is in on this…"

"I've called her again."

The hedgehog waited for follow up, but the fox made his failure clear enough. They've been trying to get a hold of Rouge for an hour now. She turned her phone off, which was unusual, and their regular contacts either didn't know or didn't want to tell where she was. Desperate, they even gave Knuckles' satellite phone a ring. Chances were the echidna broke it the day he got it without telling anyone.

Kicking back in his chair, Tails frowned at his inability to figure GUN out. Capturing Shadow wasn't as difficult as the military would have wanted the public to believe, so the prodigy couldn't see the point behind the crater. The explosion would have been too far for any civilians to hear. He wondered if Knuckles or Eggman could have heard anything. Still, if it was an explosion, nuclear or otherwise, the jungle should have disappeared altogether.

He didn't want to trouble Sonic with these thoughts. Blue Blur had a lot on his shoulders. Shadow broke into the workshop and stole a Chaos Emerald at three AM, six hours ago. Knocking and asking politely wouldn't have killed him. Tails couldn't help being annoyed at the dark hedgehog. Replacing the window meant another flight to Station Square.

Still, a friend in need was a friend indeed. Shadow definitely needed them now.

Tails unmuted his microphone. "Sonic, do you think-"

"Eggman!"

The fox jumped from his seat. He couldn't tell what was happening for a while. Sonic spun through the jungle without notice, completely messing up the signal. Even if he were to shout, Sonic was unlikely to hear him. Tails spun around to check for transmissions. GUN had none to intercept. Not even encrypted ones. It drove Tails mad. To add insult to injury, he could tell they were watching him. His website got an abnormal amount of bogus traffic from GUN bases, which would end up costing him a fortune.

A rogue click helped him concentrate. A transmission! Not even encrypted. This should be good…

"Your heat output is growing, Metal. Slow down."

He had tuned in into Eggman's frequency. What luck! The maniac hadn't used the wavelength for years. At first, Tails thought it was a compatibility issue with Metal's ageing hardware, but he couldn't get anything on the return. Only Eggman's voice filled the air.

"I know I'm sweating, but if you don't hold your turbines, you'll bash into it blind and you, unlike me, have no accountability routine for failure!" the villain screamed. They must have been at it for a while now. "Two klicks is all I ask. Their comms satellite is misaligned on purpose."

"Oh, no!" Tails exclaimed.

Eggman snorted. "Well, well. Looks like we have a listener on the Eggman radio. Leave this frequency. This is _my_ business."

The line went dead, but Tails had enough to work with by then. He tried to get Sonic's attention. Limited success. For once, he had something important to say and couldn't. Gah! Tails hopped to his main computer, trying to think positively. Sonic would get out of the jungle any second now. Enough time to start beating Eggman in his own game.

Not that the doctor needed any competition. His peaceful flight had constant interruptions along the lines of self-destruct beetles and RPG boxes GUN littered the landscape with to prevent the inevitable. They had what was rightfully his. No one steals from Eggman and gets away with it!

Egg Hornet could deflect the rockets and intercept drones with its own armaments. However, static attacks soon grew worrisome. The villain had great experience in robotics, which made evading meticulous shots a walk in the park. It's the ones human snipers were behind that he had to watch out for. They'd come from unexpected angles, enter manual tracking or explode in front of his craft to pave the way for full-blown panic.

GUN weren't exercising a regular defence perimeter. They were hunting him down. In Eggman's language, the fireworks were equivalent to pea shooters, but he knew difficulty would rise the closer he got to the target.

Sending Metal on a suicide mission brought him great joy. He even had full access to the robot's sensors. The machine was calculating a delicious number of targets…the extremely hostile kind. No need to send the Eggman to do a pawn's job.

The ship jolted awkwardly. His Egg-O-Matic could withstand an EMP blast. The hornet's attachments weren't doing so well, considering the tech was busy repelling a stream of missiles launched from the mountains surrounding the jungle. They were obstructing his view.

"Metal, what was the species of that meat shield you mentioned?"

"Indiscriminate… Feline. Purple."

"What made the locals so agitated then…you didn't give your position away yet, did you?"

"Negative."

"Hmm…"

Eggman looked at his progress with GUN satellites. They weren't just misaligned like he said during the bogus transmission. GUN were using a proxy network with dead ends in it. Finding the lead uplink was no child's play. Metal Sonic worked wonders as a temporary relay, though.

The robot could hear his ex-master's cackling a minute later. Laughter was inefficient, but he was pleased, and curious.

"Give them hell, Metal. For the Eggman Empire!"

"The second statement…"

"Shut up and have fun for once. I don't just have all the aces. I have the entire deck. Ho-ho-hoo!"

Metal didn't need to hear more. Eggman uploaded information on the convoy as well as its route.

The best part in being a mad scientist…sitting back while minions duke it out. As he pondered that thought, Eggman noticed he wasn't the only one trying to cheat. In fact, he realised the cheaters were being cheated by the game master with a spare deck of cards.

Not that it mattered. Eggman got cosy in his chair, kissed a Chaos Emerald and put it in the power node for an easy cruise above the mountains. GUN had nothing on his slim and speedy.

His creation shared the hidden sentiment. Metal boosted within visible range as the convoy took a turn into Speed Highway. Vivid plumes of smoke alerted the escorts.

"Mojo squad, hold traffic," ordered the rear sensor truck's operator.

Two motorcycles of the rear guard slowed down, leaving the rest of the convoy in the distance. Another pair turned on a dime to speed off in the opposite direction, heading straight at Metal. Remaining four cyclists divided their team to keep the convoy protected on both sides.

The pilot closest to Metal opened a transmission: "This is Mojo 4. Traffic appears to be a hedgehog."

"Sonic the Hedgehog?"

Mojo 4 could not confirm and waved at his colleague, motioning for him to speak. "Mojo 3 here. It's a robot hedgehog."

"Copy that, Mojo 3. Hold traffic," the escort truck coordinator said.

"Holy shit, is that Metal Sonic?!"

"Little Moth, we're inbound for fail-safe. Zen will handle the intercom."

What the Zen trailer's staff didn't know was that Metal handled their intercom first. Nothing like a mind game to agitate the humans.

"Surrender and die quickly," the robot announced on their frequency.

"Negative."

"In that case, just die quickly!"


	2. Sucker

**Chapter 2: Sucker**

Metal spun into a tornado along the road, swallowing Mojo 4 like a vortex. Speed Highway hadn't seen a more expensive vehicle turn to scrap. Mojo 3 dodged the hit, shooting a barrage of bullets at Metal, to no avail. The robot didn't care enough to destroy his vehicle and merely left him behind.

"Mojo squad, reset uplink. I repeat, reset uplink. Do you copy?"

Mojo 3 couldn't see what happened to his comrade. He promptly stopped the vehicle, seeing the convoy move out of sight along with the pursuer. No time to waste. Bits of Mojo 4's gear lay on the roadside, but medical teams would have to take care of that. GUN didn't give blank cheques for saving other agents. Mojo 3 turned to leave, enabling nitro.

"This is Mojo 3. Link reset. Mojo 4 lost his helmet."

It didn't take long for the robot to reach accurate distance. Metal Sonic kept trying to approach the convoy. Thus far, each side considered tactics of minor annoyance to hold the enemy at bay. Destroying the robot wasn't as important as simply keeping him busy, away from Little Moth's cargo.

A snicker rose on the line. Off-roaders from the back took position. "Kit 2 is ready for mining operation. Steer clear, you Mojos."

They didn't talk about mines in the briefing! Laying explosives on a commuter artery was nigh on insane, but Mojo 3 huffed about it for another reason: the need to improvise.

The ones prepared for the mission were the real nasty kind that stuck onto metal surfaces before exploding. Mojos 1 and 2 would have to watch out for frontal hazards as well as a mad robot creeping into melee distance.

Within seconds, the warning started applying to Mojo 1 alone as Mojo 2 had her front wheel sawn off by the enemy. She spun into the air like a ragdoll while a volley of Eggman brand rockets homed in on her vehicle. Metal didn't want to include extra hostile variables while digging through a mine field.

Every explosive he encountered on the road attached itself to the audacious robot till they had no more room to stick to. It slowed him down by increasing mass as well as triggering defensive systems. Metal let out a binary groan when the fireworks started and dunked him in man-made hell.

Mojo 3 thought he was approaching a mass of popcorn made of fire. Metal attracted so many mines that some of them were blown off the road into the cliffs at the edge of Mystic Ruins, chaining detonations away from the robot. Thankfully, Kit 2 did it before the road turned into a complex bridge suspended over the cold sea. The convoy had only the faintest of clues about what would happen should the only route into Station Square be demolished.

Metal wasn't ticklish, nor did he fancy a tickle from GUN. Some of his bolts needed tightening after the mine treatment, but he preferred to set someone else's connectors loose first. The robot kept close throughout the setback, which allowed him to ram into Mojo 1, trying to push him off the pavement. Surprisingly, the human fought back. The organic fool's kicking was no use, just like the side arm.

He extended a clawed arm, boosting on his back so he could see the victim, and approached the motorcycle's front wheel. Rather than horror, he saw resolution in the man's covered face. The agent threw a hand grenade, which spun towards the centre of Metal's turbine in roulette fashion. The explosion threw him off course, pushing the bot airborne while the human swooped back to safe distance.

Mojo 1 showed him the finger. The robot knew what he wanted to do with it.

Before he could return to the chase, however, something hit him from behind. It was Mojo 4, alive and raging with a jetpack.

"Here's a trick they showed me in boot camp," the agent hissed as he smashed a tazer into Metal's ocular panel.

It fuzzed the robot's vision, so he kicked the mushy fool in the ribs, causing a bloody yelp. Metal proceeded to crush the victim's jetpack, and discarded the rest to explode on the side. Now, where was Mojo 1…

Robots didn't have personal scores. The offensive human wasn't even a major threat, but leaving no one alive offered an aesthetic of purity Eggman's designs appreciated.

Boosting back on approach wouldn't be as easy this time. The highway towered above water. GUN could easily surprise him from below.

"Deploying hazards. Kit 1, out."

For the time being, Metal's attention remained on the road. The heavy transports resumed placing mines on its surface. Cool calculation made repeating anything a poor choice against Metal, though. He had already studied the explosive type and its fuse mechanism. With statistical certainty on his side, the robot could chuck the load back where it came from.

The turbine shone brightly to surprise the lethal carpeting with truly supersonic speed. Metal grabbed the first mine and noticed a mismatch in mass. He miscalculated. They threw EMP bombs this time. Rather than dissipate in a flash, these clung to him in a shocking manner. As he proceeded to hurriedly shake one off, another mine reduced the move to a light shudder while internal systems started to panic.

Eggman had considered the possibility. As long as the turbine retained momentum, Metal could gather enough energy to create an explosive field around his body. He squirmed into a tight ball, ready to let it loose.

Having blanked out most sensors, the machine rerouted all power to destroy the limpets. In the meantime, the off-road vehicles shot him in the front. The shot siphoned half the power from his turbine, and there were more to come.

Far away, the doctor started showing signs of worry. He couldn't interfere directly yet and losing Metal with most of the convoy still intact would have made it difficult to reach the next phase. Still, he kept his fingers crossed and increased the speed of his craft while ploughing through a never-ending missile cloud.

Due to the internal commotion, Metal's circuitry didn't count on Mojo 3's return to battle. The agent wasn't dealing regular rounds anymore. The hits his motorcycle peppered Metal with turned into foamy globs of glue that secured the shock limpets on the robot's surface. Metal felt a tranquilising effect as the main engine slowed to a crawl. It was not enough to keep him afloat. GUN were confident in their interim victory, so they tightened their positions.

The robot crashed into the pavement face-first, convulsing in disgust. Repeated electromagnetic discharges were a terminal threat if they continued. For the first time in years, Metal considered requesting Eggman's advice.

"Heh-heh," a familiar snicker reached his sensors.

It was like a cold shower. Metal set a powerful rocket off in his arm, blowing up the entire compartment, the glue and the mines. The turbine reached full throttle in half a blink.

"Priority one hedgehog."

A blue streak sped by him, quickly gaining a lead. Metal couldn't let organic Sonic steal his glory. The overseeing villain noticed that risky resolve. There were more pressing matters to take care of than the pesky rodent.

"Sonic is diving head-first because he's stupid. What is your excuse?"

Eggman would have to enjoy some alone time for that: the robot muted his transmissions immediately after recovery. Plus, diving head-first was an excellent idea. Metal spun into the concrete like a drill, appearing on the bottom side of the road. His engines provided enough thrust to stay on that level. No way could he allow military grunts take out organic Sonic for him.

The convoy welcomed Mojo 3 back into formation. Mojo 2 managed to recover thanks to the emergency jet boost after having lost her vehicle. According to the briefing, she was to board the Zen truck for medicare and a roof turret. She loved turret sections. The beautiful scope mounted on that one gave her a clear view of the scenery.

Since the road was cordoned off, motion tracking was a piece of pie. They were still a few clicks away from Station Square, illustrated by mountainous ruins in the background and worrisome foam of the sea below. Mojo 2 would have checked the road ahead, but they had two full teams on it, anyway.

"Clean-up says they blew someone feisty out of the sky," Kit 2 broke radio silence.

"I bet it's Eggman. Instant promotion to the guy that snuffs his carcass," the other four-by-four replied.

The sensor truck operator was not impressed. "Kit 2, eyes on traffic."

"No traffic as far as my eye can see, Zen."

Mojo 2 interrupted the conversation: "Uh, Zen?"

"Hold traffic, Mojo 2. Kit 2 will provide artillery fire."

"Copy that."

She armed the turret. Zen had a bullet feed coming from inside the truck, but she was more eager to dust the bridge off with a few modern homing missiles. They said it was like throwing limos at the enemy. No enemy is complete without a limo.

Two cylinders blasted off the turret's sides. Their protective padding fell apart, unveiling a small set of wings to guide a brainy camera-equipped warhead. The road was empty enough for them to target the first moving thing, Sonic the Hedgehog.

The hedgehog saw a characteristic shine followed by a wall of smoke. An addictive thrill spilled a grin over his face. Saving Shadow was a breath of fresh air compared to Eggman's regular schemes.

He knew the missiles had to do a lot of complicated stuff inside those tiny silicon heads of theirs when flying at high speed. All Sonic had to do was stop for one of them to overshoot. The other one stayed on target, forcing Sonic to swerve across the road.

Side strafing was a supersonic hedgehog staple, provided he had enough footing to work the acrobatics on. GUN made sure to disable that by juggling mortar in his path. A high speed artillery cannon launched whizzing projectiles to blow half the lanes in a single hit. It was Little Planet all over again.

And there wasn't a missile aimed at him back then. Sonic smirked as he made a salto above tarmac that turned into a gaping water hole before his very eyes. The half-hearted grin didn't last long because a second volley scrapped the to-be landing.

One missile was right on his tail, and the hedgehog barely grabbed onto the edge, having to pull up from an unplanned skid. He couldn't see the rocket anymore with debris still in the air, so he scuttled for a spindash into the sky.

It worked. Not only did it give him a full view of the convoy, but also helped lose the missile somewhere under the bridge.

Sonic poked his communicator. "Tails, you seeing this?"

"Aren't those trucks back from Central City?"

"Yeah. Looks like they're guarding the long one."

Being high above the surface was only a temporary convenience. Kit 1 joined the shooting gallery with a Chaos Drive-powered beam weapon. Controlling it from such an angle was a pain, so the first few shots missed Sonic by a hair. He could feel the chilling effect an energy siphon had on surrounding air, nonetheless.

High time to get back on track. The hedgehog blasted back to the road. Having lost a speed advantage during the jump, he had to traverse a road bombed into cheese. To make matters worse, one of the missiles corrected its course to be right on his trail again.

A blue zigzag was seen from GUN's perspective, interrupted only by the siphon gun, fully breaking the blue line into nothingness.

"Sonic, I got to their lead satellite. Looks like they have a whole server farm stacked there."

"English, Tails."

The fox sighed on the other end. "I need to sift through a bajillion files to help you. Right now, I've got access to half of them."

"Good job, Tails."

"Wait, make that a third."

"Still a good job."

"Would a fifth be okay?"

"Tails?"

A loud guffaw broke on their line. "Three's a crowd, nosy fox. That satellite is _mine_. Get out or leave!"

"Eggman!" the two exclaimed.

"I will say this only once, Sonic: this is my business. Stay out of it."

"Sorry, Eggy. If it has to do with Shadow, it's our party, too."

The villain growled irritably and turned his radio off. Those fools had no idea what they were up against.

His thoughts were only half-right. The moment Metal Sonic emerged from one of the holes in the road, Sonic could see the enemy front and centre. Determination glowed in its eyes. The machine considered multi-tasking between arch enemies a delectable achievement.

Two blurs collided in the air, causing a shockwave with each crash. The standoff brought them higher and higher above the road. Both could feel each hit causing yet another dent in the other's body. It was a crude tactic because they had to conserve strength for the convoy.

GUN stared at the fight with amusement, eager to help the duo destroy one another. Kit 1 fired the siphon as quickly as it could recharge, finding the enemies' speed to be above the on-board computer's capability. He then turned the vehicle's auto-pilot on to man the targeting system instead. A few shots later, he was effectively tracing ahead of the hedgehogs.

Kit 1's beam charged one more time to land right where their next hit should be, scraping both hedgehogs.

"Error-error-error," Metal's internals blared. His legs powered down, having absorbed most of the beam.

Sonic blacked out for a spell. When he regained sight, he could see his fist stuck in Metal's claw. Neither would budge, so there must have been fight left in the robot.

The eyes flashed menacingly as he thrust Sonic into himself at first, but the copy let go in a blink, causing a quizzical look on the other's face. Sonic acted surprised because he could see the same tail of smoke come at Metal from behind. The missile had followed him under the bridge. Little did Sonic know that Metal's eyes focused on the projectile behind the organic hedgehog.

"Sucker," both rivals sneered, truly surprising the opponent.

Two homing missiles struck their targets down in a ballooning flash of fire. The blaze conjoined in the middle, glowing brighter, swallowing the air till it impacted with the road below, cracking the tired pavement.

GUN were relentless. Even as the explosion ate more space, Kit 1 kept firing the ray gun, which punctured holes in the light show.

They didn't stop till destruction as well as distance made it impossible to tell whether the heat signatures belonged to charred corpses or living beings. Mojo 1 was sent to investigate.

Back at ground zero, Metal Sonic pressed his rear chassis plate and welded it back in place. Organic Sonic had no such functionality. The bleeding hero lay on the deserted road beneath Metal's feet.

Still breathing. The robot didn't want him to interfere any further, so he kicked the body off into a watery grave. Sonic couldn't swim to save his life. Not in this state.

Now, Metal could give his full attention to the elusive convoy. They've just passed the entry point to Station Square, which meant the mission became much harder.

But first, he'd have to take care of the one that got away. A single vehicle was sent to meet its ultimate fate as a pile of scrap. Mojo 1 didn't know about it yet, but the sight of the blue robot emerging from rubble was a firm indication.

"Save me a seat at the victory bash. Mojo 1, out."


	3. Chaos Control

**Chapter 3: Chaos Control**

He prepared everything the machine had in store for its foes. Guns blazing and missiles firing, Mojo 1 had to postpone Metal's resurgence, permanently. If all else failed, a sneaky self-destruct switch timed down to ten seconds would have to do.

Metal couldn't disagree more. While he endured the bullets, which were a mild annoyance that bounced off his chassis like sticks of cold butter, the hedgehog fired the missiles down half-way with a laser. No rubber projectiles could clog his march to victory.

The robot knew he was losing trace of the convoy as well as the fact they'd have to slow down upon entering the city. Plenty of opportunity to catch up, despite whatever Eggman kept spouting at the time. A soldier with a death wish homed in on him, and Metal's immediate objective was to meet that convenient expectation with meticulous punctuality.

As the motorcycle approached the target, Mojo 1 steered it to the side to crash into Metal right in the middle. There was no way the human would escape the hit, Metal thought.

He was wrong. Not only did the GUN agent eject at the last heartbeat, but he also managed to turn on the jetpack to hover a safe distance away while Metal braced for the real impact. The heavy vehicle hit him hard, nearly knocking the robot over. He maintained balance at the cost of a vivid skid mark on the tarmac. Those were the remains of anti-corrosive paint they applied to his soles back in Final Egg.

Angry about the outcome, Sonic's rival gripped the vehicle to rip it apart, only to be surprised by a completed countdown. A blinding light showered his sensors, overshadowing the rest. Whoever was listening to Metal's transmissions could only hear a high-pitched ring. It resonated timelessly as if during a comms test. Little would the listener have known it was the sound of the explosion heard from within the robot's head.

Mojo 1 saw a slouched over figure emerge from the resulting smoke, as battered as the road it stood on. A great black stain covered the deep blue of the hedgehog's front casing, edging over on his quills, one of which was torn off. His back, previously wrecked by the missile strike, looked pristine compared to the wafer-like surface of the façade.

The hostile was obviously powered down: its eyes stopped glowing and the turbine spun only because of the wind, a dull and mournful gust that would pick up only the tiniest particles from the highway. Most of these were the result of GUN's gruelling journey. At this rate, they'd all get medals, a presidential welcome…everything they'd have asked for.

A souvenir would be nice, Mojo 1 thought. None of the agents survived a standoff with Metal Sonic, much less remained physical enough for the medical team to examine the robot's destructive power. A small piece would look great in the corner office he'd get after the mission. Well, not too small. Scientists would want some as well.

Turning the jetpack off, the soldier landed to find the best part. The head looked kind of heavy…too big to fit in a standard rucksack. Oil stains decorated the feet, but an arm, the part up to the elbow would look great. Up close, he couldn't stop appreciating Eggman's attention to detail: every curve and angle could act as a weapon, each finger bent as functionally as a human's own, yet much more resilient, resistant to pain, fire, even time. Despite intense fighting, the claws still gleamed in the sun.

Beautiful weather lulled over the deserted highway with the only bits of cloud hanging above the metropolis in the distance. It was definitely his time to be a hero.

Mojo 1 took his helmet off to inspect the joints. The agent reached for the elbow seal, feeling a nut or a turn valve. Something clicked when he touched the robot, and the human could easily bend the hand outwards as far as he wanted. A creature of flesh would have screamed in terror by now while a machine could ignore being violated so.

It didn't want to, though. Metal's hand snapped all the way back till the claw appeared on the steel shoulder, the agent's grubby paw stuck in-between.

He cried out, brought to his knees to reduce the soaring hurt, to no avail. Metal Sonic now held a firm grip on him, examining the captive.

No, it was the other hand he desired. Metal released the formless mass that used to be a wrist to hang limply and grabbed the other set of organic fingers to meet his accelerating jet engine.

Blood and spittle twitched onto the robot's face. The score was settled; the human posed no threat once turned into a screaming invalid. Still, he did ram a motorcycle into Metal.

The agent was sent flying into the nearest gap in the bridge. Metal resumed calculating his assault on the convoy while performing some interim repairs. A few quill plating pieces on the left side would remain missing for the rest of the mission. Acid cleaning and manual dent reduction could, however, make other parts look brand new. He made sure to keep the scorched blood on the turbine. The convoy deserved having their morale razed to the ground. But first, Metal wanted to get a better look at Mojo 1's helmet. He had a plan brilliant enough to make the squishy creator jiggle in delight.

All engines. Full power.

Eggman would have seconded the notion, but he was busy. GUN's relentless bombardment brought him down from the mountains to a safe haven under the bridge. At least, he thought it was safe before he saw holes popping up randomly, hedgehogs flying out of them.

One such hedgehog landed on his craft, effectively breaking the Chaos shield and soaking up its power. The scientist grumbled sourly as he tried to push the semi-conscious body off. Egg Hornet wasn't built to pick pests off its fuselage and Eggman didn't feel like getting out of his seat.

So, he was stuck.

Completing an artsy manoeuvre was out of the question: the waters looked peaceful enough, but GUN would not have left them unattended. The small aerial vehicle had no sonar equipped, so he preferred a safe and steady approach. Station Square's street layout would hinder the convoy enough for him to regain a confident hawk's eye on the situation.

Which was nigh on impossible while under the bridge with Sonic drooling on his gear. Eggman threw a juice carton at the pest, resulting in barely a twitch from the rodent's side and complete loss of refreshments. He could have detached the seat instead…

As he wiggled his moustache, thinking intensively, a mutilated screamer knocked into his ship, leaving a large red stain over the hornet's attachments. Thankfully, Eggman's personal craft automatically released a protective bubble. It saved the doctor's tidy suit.

The hit shook his creation enough to misplace Sonic into a slow slip along the chassis. He grinned, fists clenched firmly. A few seconds longer and the pest would fall into oblivion along with the GUN agent.

A pair of green eyes stabbed into Eggman's tiny pupils during the cheer. Sonic wasn't aware of his surroundings yet, but the vile man's presence offered enough resolve to bring strength back into his limbs. He struggled to remain on the craft.

In the meantime, Mojo 1 splashed down. He didn't drown thanks to the high-tech suit. An emergency beacon turned on upon impact, alerting the coast guard of trouble beyond usual road rage.

Waters shifted, bursting in tall foamy waves that eclipsed the fallen man's physique before he re-emerged atop all the assistance he could have craved for. A nuclear submarine surfaced to save the injured comrade.

"Oh, crud," Eggman piped, searching for the throttle switch with his eyes.

Sonic was waiting for that. The moment his enemy's attention skipped a beat, Blue Blur reached for the one thing he needed since the fall, Eggman's Chaos Emerald.

The hedgehog nicked it effortlessly despite the man's grubby hands trying to pull it back. Sonic expected hatred to boil the villain's skin red, but all he could see was minute disappointment in the background of opening missile hatches below.

"This is out of your league, hedgehog. But I promise you will live if you return the emerald to me. Now."

He smirked in return, looking at the odds Eggman was up against. Sonic owed him nothing. "Keep promises to yourself, Egghead. Chaos Control!"

A dull echo reached the hedgehog during the warp. Despite being a colossal jerk, Eggman deserved to live through this one. In secret, Sonic hoped to see him again, but not too soon. The circumstances were too grave for games.

Chaos powers brought him atop a skyscraper near the entryway to Station Square. One could see the highway snaking for miles into the distance. Sonic's attention belonged to the convoy, though. It slowed down to a crawl and a laser marker flashed upwards from the capture truck's cabin. What luck!

The hedgehog kneeled down for a swift lunge. For the first time, he was ahead of them. GUN had placed snipers on the rooftops, but he couldn't warp closer so early. A vertical run would have to do.

Sonic let go, bathing in the wind as he fell a hair away from the glass walls. The feeling was exhilarating, adrenaline-pumping, and it was just a taste grown tenfold once his feet started working down the surface. It wasn't a free fall; it was a supersonic fall.

He broke through the bottom exhibition hall, slicing through the mirror panels for a clean spindash on the safe ground below. Having something firm and waterless gave him more confidence, and now he had a shiny edge Metal wouldn't have known about. Oddly enough, he recalled leaving that emerald at Tails' workshop for safekeeping a few days ago.

"You still there, buddy?" he poked the communicator again.

A sniffle was heard on the other side. "Sonic! I thought something happened to you…the line was dead for so long!"

"Guess you still have some bugs to iron out."

"Yeah, sorry about that," he replied in a wheezing voice. "All right, I've managed to catch a glimpse at their route before Eggman locked me out. They are heading for Rail Canyon, but there's a stop marker close to city hall's bell tower."

"Making it easier for us, huh?"

"Sonic, you can't let them reach city hall! You won't believe the machinery that's waiting for them. It's all over the news already!"

Unlike Tails, Sonic knew exactly what machinery waited for them. Eggman had more than one robot on his roster. Still, he couldn't help easing up a bit once out in the street. The locals were used to seeing him around. They waved and cheered him on while getting on with their daily lives. There were few cars, however, and an unusually large number of cops. Temporary stop signs littered the streets, turning some unfortunate drivers back.

"What's up, Tails? Looks like the roads are blocked."

"There's a parade."

"What?"

"It's on TV right now. I'll turn up the volume," Tails said before scuttling to find the remote.

The mayor was making a speech: "The Guardian Units of Nations are here to commemorate the anniversary of our city's liberation from the evil Eggman. For the first time, our peaceful city will see the greatest inventions of mankind created to protect our values from extinction. The men and women behind the arduous task of keeping us safe are here to share the joy of freedom, which-"

Sonic groaned. "I've heard enough, thanks."

A blue streak zipped along the streets outward to where the convoy was regrouping. They were up to pass a set of tunnels before turning to a large roundabout for a mostly straight drive to the square near city hall. The shortest way to Rail Canyon from there was via a high overpass replacing the old dirt road through Bullet Station.

Fighting GUN with all the people in the buildings as well as parade spectators outside was a no-no, so Sonic didn't know how in the world he could rescue Shadow. Still, there had to be a way.

The trucks moved slowly. Their escorts drove in tight defensive formation, which looked uncomfortable for the pilots. Some of the tunnels underneath the buildings must have been deepened to allow the main vehicle to pass, but they had to retract the turret and shielding while constantly stopping to check if the next push was safe.

Sonic noticed the convoy was down to four motorcyclists, spread out in pairs in front of an identical number of heavy transports and a sensor truck cutting the approach to Little Moth on both ends. They saw him, too, but didn't attack.

"Can't we zap him…just a little?" groaned an off-road transport driver.

"Negative, Kat 2. Fail-safe is cancelled if aggressive defence protocols are breached."

"Blah, blah. I'm applying for rear guard when this is over."

"Your call, Kat 2. Mojo team will need fresh blood."

Throughout the conversation, the gun barrels remained pointed at Sonic, who was just standing there, watching. It was the first time he had a chance to see the entire convoy up close.

Shadow was definitely inside the big cistern-thing. Chaos energy coming from it felt stronger than anything he had felt for months, and it reacted to the emerald. Sadly, he couldn't approach the container without an invisible GUN drone pushing him away. Tails would have loved to be with him now. In a way, he was.

"Well, I feel useless," Sonic muttered.

It didn't take long for the fox to reply. "I don't think so. There's a lot of static, but I managed to scan the big truck. It has an armed holographic lock with a frequency of-"

"Tails…"

He sighed. "Umm…it's locked in a way that will squash Shadow unless you use a special electronic key code."

"Sweet! And you buddy o' chum o' genius have the code!"

"No," Tails admitted after a pause, sensing discontent on the receiving end. "But I know it's in the main lorry driver's cabin."

"That's kind of sweet, too."

It would have been very sweet were it possible for him to get near that cabin without having his hand scorched by a drone. Those drones had explosive charges in case of a bigger breach, and Sonic had no intention of causing one in a highly populated city that he saved more times than GUN failed to contain Eggman.

While Sonic paced alongside the convoy, the last remaining rear guard motorcycle with Mojo 3 perched on it consistently kept him at bay, receiving muted applause from his colleagues. Another foe didn't make much of a difference for the hedgehog as long as he held a Chaos Emerald. Hopefully, the energy footprint from the containment vehicle was big enough to cloud GUN's close range sensors. Sonic was unsure if plain hiding the powerful gem was enough for successful infiltration.

Clutching it tight, the hedgehog whispered the words, but only felt an odd vibe coming from the jewel, as if it was being dimmed by another presence. The convoy also felt a sudden dip in power, which shut down Mojo 3's motor. He had to stay behind as the rest moved forward. Whether it was due to the siphons they wielded, the jewel or what was inside the lead truck, he didn't know. Tails couldn't help, either.

The silent standoff kept everyone's teeth gritting, fingers itching above every trigger. They wouldn't get another chance to down Sonic! Just a few shots from the siphon would weaken him enough to be carried by hand into Shadow's mobile prison. GUN could get rid of both unstable variables in one go.

And yet, orders were orders. The teams knew what awaited them in case of failure. Insubordination would have had unimaginable consequences to everyone involved.

Little Moth hoped the hedgehog would simply go away. He had enough tension from coasting the cargo all the way from Mystic Ruins. The pilot remained calm on the outside, though. He needed a steady hand to curve at the roundabout without hitting the fountain in the middle. They could have demolished the fountain since the road was blocked… Well, only some were destined to die perfect.

The thought cheered him up a bit. Hands turned quickly to straighten out after the roundabout. A tidy road with only a minor bend to the right presented itself en route to the mayor's office. Group B of the elite advance team would join them for the next leg of the trip. Till then, they had to crawl to the rendezvous point according to PR department's instructions. Had those bastards been allowed freedom to roam, the vehicles would have paraded in garish paintjobs and flags poked into antenna stalks. They could have done something about the clouds, nonetheless. Little Moth had found the weather fantastic till they entered the city.

He pulled through the last bend, eager to press the accelerator to end the tired pace. Civilian police GUN mocked on a daily basis saluted the convoy ignorantly. Station Square needed to clean up its act: an open maintenance car with cordon posts and red tape spilling out of its rear stood unattended by the street corner. Amateurs…

"Check our six, Mojo 3," Zen said with a hint of worry. "Mojo 3…"

Mojo 3 managed to drive back up, doing as told. A surge of light forced him to swerve away instinctively. The signpost car was chucked forward with great force, hitting Kit 1 and bouncing upwards to be annihilated by defence drones. The convoy could see the culprit by then.

Eggman's forces had fixated a laser cannon into the corner building. Having disposed of the obstacle, it was ready to fire again. This time, at a prime target.


	4. Love, Rouge

**Chapter 4: Love, Rouge**

"Kit team, aggressive defence only!" Zen shouted at the top of her lungs.

The next shot escaped the circular laser plate as a full-on destructive beam, heading straight at the heavy off-road transports. Kit vehicles' Chaos siphons fizzled from the immense power. Eggman's booby-trap swallowed their shots without missing a photon.

Kit 1 reached out for the 'eject' button, but the machine imploded before the emergency signal reached his chair. It was a direct hit. Chunks of red hot metal dissipated in the street while the shockwave broke ground floor windows in adjacent buildings. The snipers on top were as baffled as the rest of the convoy.

Mojo 3 kept his cool, however, and drove back to the laser before it could charge another shot. A few puffy glue projectile followed by a standard grenade made short work of the idle cannon. The resulting bang created a hole in the wall as well as more panic in the street, the police included. Still, the cost of one operative was minuscule. Zen would have been the next target.

Sonic stood baffled on the other side of the street. The crowd by the city hall saw the event on a large screen, and it met GUN's ingenuity with applause. Even the mayor took part in in the congratulatory roar, calling the scene an amazing demonstration.

In the meantime, the saviour drove towards Zen's sensor truck. He was allowed to attach the motorcycle to the trailer and come inside. That was a third country's annual budget-worth of tech he'd just saved.

Was it really a publicity stunt? The broken windows looked real, as were the scared people behind them.

Moments later, the convoy successfully reached the large square next to city hall, joining a band of other GUN vehicles to an orchestral fanfare, streamers and camera flashes. The kids found GUN "so cool" for offering an unexpected show.

The single blue hedgehog stared at the event from afar. GUN seemed to be in a rush to leave the city despite pitching up a friendly façade. Normally, Sonic would have acted in kind. This time, a friend's life hanged in the balance and the enemy was becoming truly dangerous.

Introductory noise settled down, signalling the whole parade to move on. A crowd of excited people followed them on both sides. These people were laughing boisterously. Kids pointed at the tanks and missile launchers, took panoramic pictures and waved in front of the TV cameras.

"Ha-ha!" the mayor chortled into the microphone.

Laughter resonated from many loudspeakers in the square, slowing down, losing pitch. The culprit stopped laughing by then as he eyed other dignitaries perched on a make-shift podium on the bell tower, before turning a sour expression at technical staff.

The loudspeakers kept bustling with noise. It transformed drastically: "Muwuahahaha!"

Parade-goers looked around for the source. There were so many people, curious and amused by the next turn of events.

The snipers knew what was happening, however, and tipped security to bring the mayor to safety. Eggman's resilient craft hanged in the clouds above the city. Turbo jets were dispatched to take care of the madman. They decided to let him have a laugh before exploding into pieces during the brightest moment in GUN's history.

Eggman thought differently. He settled down to a more solemn mood before embodying the pompous evil he represented.

"Protecting our values from extinction," he mocked the mayor's accent. "Get a load of this!"

On command, dozens of pawns burst out of the surrounding buildings, flooding the square. Laughter quickly turned to tears as they began slashing through the crowd to get to the GUN units. The commotion paralysed their movement.

Little Moth gulped, seeing reinforcements get outnumbered. Pawns were nothing alone, but they just kept coming. Snipers took out a few, and foot soldiers wrecked some more, only to cry for command to allow the use of heavy weapons. GUN could not protect itself and the civilians at the same time.

Advance team had to make a decision while it still possessed units able to decide anything. The moment a pawn got close to a tank, it would start cutting it to pieces with a laser blowtorch.

They had to protect the convoy at all costs. Missile launchers popped defensive lids off their arrays, aiming at enemy concentration points. They fired resiliently, taking a blind eye on any person that could have gotten in the way. The resulting explosions sent pieces of Eggman's handiwork to fall very quickly. GUN began sweeping the area clean with plenty of munitions still at their disposal.

Eggman was waiting for it. A group of ten golden E-2000 robots swooped down onto the battlefield, able to take the heavy armaments on even terms. Their powerful shields completely negated missile attacks. At the same time, GUN's launchers had nothing of the sort to protect them from the enemy's boiling-point cannons. If the unit had no explosives to combust, the rays simply melted the crew, rendering the array useless. Tanks went down equally fast.

"Break formation. Engage all hostiles."

It looked like the tables have turned. The convoy had to join in the fight. Kit and Kat teams spread out, taking pot shots at the robots to drain their power supply. Mojo 2 hopped back to her turret, beheading two hostiles. The containment vehicle released a few hunter drones to draw enemy fire. Sensor trucks along with front motorcycle team Jojo remained close to Little Moth, though. Reinforcements or not, they had a mission to complete and were slowly sneaking away from the battlefield.

Sonic tried helping. He fought the E-2000 before, and breaking a few more went swimmingly because he could always time the hits a split second before the bot managed to enable the shield. The hedgehog noticed that GUN vehicles kept softening up the ones he was about to busy himself with, a move he appreciated greatly.

With two robots left, it looked like the victor became obvious. Sonic launched a homing attack on one while GUN blew the other to kingdom come. They would have made a high five, had the sides become less aware of the big picture.

At least, Sonic was still fully conscious. He couldn't say so about one of the off-road vehicles. The heat of battle allowed an E-1007 Heavy Egg Hammer to approach it from behind. The hedgehog waved and hopped to get the pilot to turn around, but it was no use. Having supposedly destroyed the E series robots, they all concentrated on Sonic instead.

Big mistake. The robot's hammer flattened one of the vehicles to explode into all corners of the world. The blow was hard enough to impale the hammerhead into the pavement, encouraging the metal monster to beat itself on the chest like an overgrown monkey. However, before the enemy could use the self-inflicted tremor to its advantage, Eggman's creation pulled the weapon out and swung it to topple another transport to roll upside-down, completely ignoring their siphons thanks to reflective plating. Kat team's existence hanged in the balance.

Sonic couldn't move closer to the machine without getting zapped by the reflections. He wanted them to stop shooting despite having no way to communicate. GUN did what they thought they knew best.

The towering monster approached its immobilised prey. A vicious smile adorning the face paint looked fitting for the robot's purpose, a hulk of brute force. Another member of the Kat team fell under the hammer. Only one transport remained after the smash. The hedgehog would have to play it smart if he wanted to avoid becoming a cake of flattened jelly.

It seemed like the ground was shaking from Egg Hammer's malevolence while Eggman's enemies failed to find a way to work together. At those odds, Kit 2 decided he had enough pointless shooting and flashed the transport's headlights several times at Sonic before retreating.

"Elite cowards," Sonic snorted in return.

He thought GUN had nothing good enough to throw at the bot, so they were leaving the clean-up to him. Fine. Sonic fought heavies in the past…with help from his friends because the armour would bend very little even after uncovering the weak point.

Seeing that Sonic was alone to face him, Egg Hammer flexed its electromagnetic biceps to launch a relentless windmill attack. The hammer swung in all directions, faster than ever. Sonic had nothing to lose, though, and homing-attacked the berserk robot to be bounced away by its chaotic weapon and launched into the bell tower. Sonic could now lose the hurt.

The structure's surface spiderwebbed as the hedgehog was embedded into concrete. He coughed. All the dust made it difficult to see what the robot was up to, but he knew it would lose balance soon. It was their fatal design flaw.

Rather than a clumsy oaf ready to fall, he saw an agile monster throw the hammer at the tower. The hedgehog's heart squeezed like a lemon, enabling his lightning fast reflexes.

The ground rumbled like before, only a light so bright it eclipsed Sonic's vision followed the quake. Once his eyes regained functionality, the hedgehog saw himself on the ground next to a tower broken in half by the hammer.

Heavy Egg Hammer lay in the middle of the square with its mechanical innards sparking around a hole. It wasn't an earthquake; GUN had sent ramjets to thwart Eggman's plot. The villain was nowhere in sight, so that was that.

Not a moment too soon, Sonic thought.

Frightened people started poking their heads from cracks and dark corners of ruined buildings. There were plenty of injured citizens. Emergency sirens muffled the cries.

"Tails?"

"They always have a large medical team during these shows; the people will be fine." He paused, surprised by the TV broadcast. "The mayor just promised to move your statue out of the casino to the main square. Looks like you saved the day, in his opinion."

"Gotcha!"

Sonic turned to leave. GUN looked in big enough disarray for him to safely use Chaos Control. He smiled at the hand holding the emerald to see a glass fake in its place. A card dangled on a string.

The hedgehog swore hard enough to squeeze a tear out of his pain-soaked eye when the replica fell to the ground. He would make it on foot, away from a metropolis that failed to properly recognise its heroes.

"Love, Rouge," the card had said before a sneaker pressed it into the lawn.

Yet again a short visit turned into a complete city escape. Still, the convoy couldn't have gotten far even with the roads prepared for evacuation. He was right. Kit 2 made himself known by firing a warning shot in front of Sonic's shoe. While not a real hit, the hedgehog could feel the burn for a few seconds till he decided to approach, anyway.

Red markers moved in the streets to centre on the hedgehog threat as snipers took their cue. Sonic would not be allowed to reach the convoy, which had more than enough on its hands without his meddling.

Little Moth kept eyeing the fail-safe switch that command allowed him to use. He could have pressed it to obliterate the robots and saved most of advance group B. A hunch coupled with belief in GUN's ground force kept him from panicking, though. He was glad for preserving the protocol. Other members of his team seemed proud of the way things worked out.

"Jojo team, Kit 2 needs help," Zen's sister truck on front guard, Buddha, called out.

Two motorcycles turned away in Sonic's direction. Snipers, no matter how experienced, were no match for the hero's speed and gymnastics. Jojo 1 and Jojo 2 remained by Little Moth's ride, on each end of the convoy. They had more than escort duty to think about.

"How's traffic, Zen?" Little Moth asked.

Zen had been the most useful member during the operation, in his opinion. He didn't know her real name, but it would have been nice to have a coffee together or meet up for a victory bash. Strangely, Zen wouldn't reply. Little Moth kept his eyes on the tall overpass connecting Station Square to Rail Canyon while the ear remained glued to the voice comm.

"Uh, was it something I said?"

Buddha intervened. "Zen, Mojo 3 should return to rear guard."

As she uttered those words, Mojo 3's motorcycle detached from Zen's trailer and fell on the road before engaging its self-destruct sequence. Jojo 2 fell off his vehicle from the blast, rolling on the ground disoriented, but everyone's attention leaned towards the back sensor truck.

Seconds later, Metal Sonic clawed his way to the lorry's top dressed in Mojo 3's scorched uniform. Once out, he tore the protective gear to pieces, revealing their comrade's blood underneath the coat.

Little Moth twitched from the sight. The robot must have gutted everyone in Zen's truck and now prepared to down another. He would be stopped.

"Enabling fail-safe, now!"

The pilot punched the red fail-safe button and set coordinates to Zen's GPS. So much for a blind date, he thought as he pressed "Fire."

"Rest in pieces, jerk," the agent grumbled.

Metal's eyes flashed ominously. Standing atop a vehicle within jumping distance from the lead truck, he knew exactly what was coming, and the robot would have himself disassembled if he missed getting the front seat in the most amazing light show he was out to see for the next trillion processing cycles.

A large laser beam crashed through the skies. It evaporated cumulous clouds with a mere touch, disintegrating them outward, and melted through all obstacles till it hit the ground, digging two metres into the road behind Zen's truck. As it kept charging, growing in width and intensity, the beam went faster, swallowing the back of the truck and inching towards Metal Sonic's defiant frame.

Little Moth grinned at the robot's ignorance. No machine could survive such a blast. It was their ultimate guarantee of success.

And yet, it fell short of frying Metal. The beam fizzled out without getting a chance to even scratch the robot. He jumped off the truck's molten remains, looking forward. The performance he waited for was out to begin.

Buddha gulped on air. "Alternative route, Little Moth. Go, go, go!"

Right before their eyes, the overpass was completely destroyed by the GUN satellite. The ray had charged fully, presenting enough destruction to annihilate everything it touched and forming a seemingly bottomless pit in the convoy's path. The way forward ceased to exist.

Shadow's captors had to move without hesitation. Little Moth turned as swiftly as the heavy vehicle allowed. Command had an alternative route ready in case of…unforeseen complications. They covered it in training, so it would be possible to reach the launch pad via Bullet Station.

The problem was that GUN had never fully cleaned the dusty canyons of Eggman's drones. Lacking alternatives, Little Moth's truck drove downhill. In his view, the whole operation was going there.

His heart was still pounding when command opened a secure channel.


	5. What is Eggman After?

**Chapter 5: What is Eggman After?**

Command had a nasty habit of bringing the bad news first, last and foremost. Still, Little Moth hoped for solace to fit the mission's importance. He enabled two-way communication.

"Your satellite uplink was compromised. Proceed as planned."

"Copy that, command. What about fail-safe?"

"Privileges revoked until further notice. Command takes direct control."

Little Moth punched the passenger's seat, but retained a cool tone. "Command, I was promised reinforcements…"

"Advance group A will be waiting for you at the launch. End transmission."

It had to be a joke. He lost half of the convoy, group B was completely destroyed and Metal Sonic had an open window to strike the containment vehicle. The pilot examined his current route: the convoy skidded down a grassy hill to reach the road into Bullet Station. It was still under construction. The good extension from Station Square's countryside contrasted greatly with the risky canyons punctured by mad rails twenty klicks inland.

The convoy cut through a makeshift roadblock without remorse, perfectly aware that Metal Sonic could do the same to each of them. Command left them stranded, so survival of the fittest would take here and now. Little Moth prayed for the teams to stay together. It was the only way to prevent a catastrophe.

Jojo 2 clashed with the hedgehog first by cutting his approach to the lead truck from behind. He was the heaviest of the agents, built strong enough to require no protection on his seasoned arms. An enemy of flesh and bone would have found it impressive, but not Metal. The hedgehog ignored the biker at first, only pushing him out of the way in order to latch onto the containment truck, yet Jojo 2 proved more resourceful than his attire suggested. He side-stepped the robot's speed to the point of making the machine slow down to avoid witless collision. Once in position, the agent reached into a pocket and threw an activated tazer at the bot. Metal considered it foolish until he saw the man manually pull on the front blaster. The weapon remained functional despite a wild spark fest from being bent backwards.

The agent chuckled when he pressed the trigger. A ball of glue foamed around the discarded tazer, sticking it to the enemy's leg. It slowed him down, as the affected leg started randomly hitting the pavement. He had to stop completely in order to dispose of the annoying device.

If GUN wanted to sacrifice more people, Eggman's creation was more than happy to assist. Turbine blades flashed for lift-off, which quickly brought him back within melee distance to the motorcyclist. The hedgehog landed on the back of Jojo 2's vehicle.

The agent turned on his autopilot as he stood up to face Metal with a well-deserved punch in the faceplate. He grinned under the helmet since the foe just stood there after impact, probably shocked by a break in its circuits.

Reality was cruel and entirely different. Metal merely wanted to divert the agent's attention from the foot he had tazed. Jojo 2 felt the limb squeeze into his abdomen, but resisted the urge to curl up and bow to the scrapheap.

He threw another punch, this time, at the damaged left quill. Electric pops flew alongside bits of blue paint. Metal flinched, so the human hit the sore spot again and again till the robot was forced to leap from his motorcycle.

Metal held onto his head in obvious turmoil. He didn't leave the pesky human without a parting gift, however. Jojo 2 saw a sticky bomb left where he stood.

"Crud," he grumbled, proceeding to grind it off the motorcycle.

The robot used the opportunity to boost ahead. Had Eggman installed a proper mouth, it would have grinned like the scientist used to. Metal caught Jojo 2's attention only when he launched a rocket at the vehicle's front wheel, sending the motorcycle on a windmill tumble in the air. At it spun, the sticky bomb exploded. The already injured pilot flew forward so quickly he thrust ahead of Shadow's vessel. Metal could dash straight at the exposed target.

In the meantime, Sonic was feverishly avoiding the fate of one back in the desolate streets of Station Square. He had no chance of stopping to examine the surroundings, making one blind jump after another. Snipers were eager to slice bits of him off whenever he leapt onto the side of a building. Kit 2 continuously dispensed mines on the dirt path dug by the GUN satellite. Jojos 3 and 4 kept him busy at the edges by knocking into him via sudden changes in speed and direction.

Sonic could not believe the amount of destruction GUN caused to the city just by passing through. They fired a satellite beam, which looked like a cut-down version of the Eclipse Cannon. He hoped to bits they wouldn't fire again. Without an emerald, he'd have no chance at survival.

Thankfully, he wasn't the only one experiencing a bad luck streak. Kit 2 reached the end of the destroyed road and was unable to proceed. Motorcyclists could leap out of the ditch to keep pestering the hedgehog, but the bulky mine-laying transport had to back away a little. The mine field Sonic had masterfully avoided locked it close to the edge without any possibility to find a detour.

"See you at the launch party, Jojo team."

Having left the Chaos siphon-equipped vehicle behind, Sonic felt a lot better about his chances. He was able to touch down on the road without much trouble. Avoiding GUN's liberal distribution of lead pellets became pretty much routine.

Tails found it fitting to pipe in. "Someone wants to talk to you."

"A little busy now…"

The line screeched for a second before a female voice broke out: "Just keeping my emerald warm, thanks. What are you up to, Blue Boy?"

Sonic's brow ridges slid down to form a sharp curve in the middle. "Saving my friend, something they don't teach in spy school."

She chuckled. "Why don't you join me at the casino and leave the boring fight to Eggman? Emeralds love company."

"Your nerve's the size of your boobs. Cut her off, Tails."

The fox hesitated.

"I'm not doing this to earn favour with you, Sonic. If you really care about Shadow, you'll see me at the casino."

"Tails!"

His friend did as asked. Meanwhile, Sonic homing-attacked one of the motorcycles, throwing Jojo 3 off his seat and into an office building's window. The two crashed so violently the agent skidded through a set of desks before breaking through a wall panel. His jet pack turned on at impact. It didn't help his predicament as it set the floor on fire, but it did help Sonic vent.

"How many times she switched sides, do you know?"

Tails agreed with his friend in spirit, but he knew bitterness spoke for the hedgehog. Rouge had never betrayed GUN and every time she played for Eggman's team, it was to her real employers' benefit. Stealing Sonic's emerald the moment she got out of a boring court session defined great benefit in GUN's point of view. Then again, Batgirl normally managed to balance morality with utility. If she miscalculated with the emerald, though…

The fox jumped from his seat.

He wasn't the only one to do so. Sonic nearly skipped off to another dimension when a ramjet stormed through the streets above his head. It discharged one of those flashbang explosives, blanking out the hedgehog along with remaining GUN operatives.

Sonic saw it far away once the effect diminished. The jet carried off Kit 2. The hedgehog huffed, realising that they were stalling him the entire time. With one motorcycle enemy at his side, however, the delay wouldn't last long. Departure from Station Square opened the countryside for Sonic to blaze past.

His enemy must have realised that as well. Sonic approached the special agent with sign language: "I won't kick your ass if you stay here."

The vehicle slowed down instantaneously. Wow, that was an effective conversation. Sonic didn't think he motioned it out right, too. He smirked at the free road ahead.

So did the foe. Left behind, he fired a volley from the motorcycle's glue gun, stunning Sonic to stick to the road. Another jet was approaching.

They'd finish the job, Jojo 4 thought as he left the hero alone.

Sonic squirmed feverishly. The glue spread everywhere: on his head, arms and torso. He felt humiliated, like a fly stuck to a strip. Without a Chaos Emerald for help, it would take too long to wiggle out whilst the booming sound grew in strength. Sonic closed his eyes, ready to wince.

An explosion occurred in the dark. It treated the captive hedgehog to a gust of hot wind. The next sensation brought even less comfort: a singeing intensity melted the glue away and broke the tarmac underneath into tiny pieces. It drained him nearly as much as an explosion would have and Sonic wasn't in the mood to stay for the big bang. He was free!

The hero looked around, but only saw pieces of ruptured steel with GUN's insignia next to the road. Eggman's tiny craft floated in the distance.

Sonic shook his head. Time was ticking away. A wave of concentrated blue cut through the air as he moved back into the race.

Metal Sonic had a generous lead in the competition. With no one left to guard Little Moth's back, he approached the lead truck without a care. Only an invisible shield made of GUN beetles bounced him back. These defensive drones couldn't harm him from a distance in this mode, so he picked them off one by one with a laser aimed at a single spot. They fell like ducks in a shooting gallery to become trash on the road.

The truck made a sudden turn to the right, closer to the edge. Metal followed its lead as they passed road construction vehicles. They were already in Bullet Station. Bullet train rails coiled at the mountainside, arching high and low along with their persistent companions, the Rhino Liners.

Rather than keep up with the laser fire, Metal morphed one of his hands into a machinegun to increase the rate of shield scrapping. Rhino locomotives assisted him by launching spiky cannonballs along the convoy's armour to further spread the protectors. Little Moth had to release another batch of GUN hunters to fend off the E series trains; he knew they stood no chance against the real enemy.

Within seconds of the cannonade, Metal saw his bullets ricochet from Shadow's container. The robot was free to break in.

Metal's sensors noted a high-speed projectile coming in his direction. It was too bulky to be a rocket despite behaving as one. The robot turned and saw a small plane drop Kit 2 back onto the road, too close for comfort.

"Kit 2 is ready to crunch."

"Welcome back, Kit 2. Buddha will assist."

Before he could start razing the irksome energy siphon, Metal saw a large shadow tower above him. The front sensor truck lost its cargo hold, releasing R-1/A Flying Dog manned by Jojo 2. The strong-armed agent became the life of the party.

Metal wanted to land one between the guy's eyes, but his routines concentrated on defence from all sides at once. To make matters worse, the twin missile stock VTOL dumped several compact cases that assembled into hunter drones.

The Chaos gun charged up behind him. Hunters swooped down to Metal's height, protecting Little Moth.

Eggman's robot did not have enough power to take on all of them. Dissatisfied with the math he computed, Metal put his servos in reverse. Statistically, he could withstand one siphon shot, so he took the chance.

Kit 2's beam pierced him through the middle in perfect accord. A hunter that hovered in front of the enemy fell down from the ray upon exit. Little Moth's truck reflected the siphon into a canyon.

On the verge of receiving a fatal error in his power supply, the robot kept backing away into Kit 2 till he was on top of the transport. Kit 2 ordered the long barrel to detach from the siphon's base, so it could still target Metal using a compact muzzle. The robot would not enjoy a blind spot.

Metal wasn't intending to. He disabled the link to the lower half of his torso, holding on to the vehicle's chassis with his claws. This way, he would have enough power to withstand another drain shot. Kit 2 didn't fail the robot's expectations by firing at the turbine. It stopped spinning seconds ago, so no damage was done.

Seeing that the robot remained clung to his vehicle, Kit 2 activated an electric shield. The alternating current bursts fuzzed up Metal's advanced programming. He had to detach and recharge or there wouldn't be enough power even for a plain reboot.

Defensive systems turned off one after another. Metal's insides stopped flashing error messages when the warning sensor went offline. The robot had a theory, however: a machine able to fire an energy vacuum multiple times, retain a shock layer and drive on harsh terrain for hours without a refuel was either a large battery on its own or it had an improved Chaos Drive.

Sonic's robotic copy disabled a part of the core systems. His hands clawed at the armour, scraping pieces of steel away, digging into the back of the transport. One remaining sensor went off the charts when it found a precious supply of energy.

At the same time, the siphon fired at Metal's head. The dialogue window asking for a complete system restart disappeared. Metal stopped moving.

"Sending repair drones your way, Kit 2," Little Moth announced. The tiny spider-shaped mechanics were meant for his truck, but the convoy needed all the pilots it currently had.

A swarm of agile eight-legged orbs surrounded the transport. Some of them tried to unsuccessfully spray Metal's remains off the exposed Chaos Drive using their weak cleaning nozzles. A hunter hovered over to help.

It put a magnetic arm onto Metal's head to get him off. When he reached out, something inside Metal clicked.

"All systems, full power," the command log concluded.

He was done playing games with GUN's insignificant toys. Metal dug into the Chaos Drive, its wonderful pool filling the robot's reserve batteries to the brim. He was so full of magnificent excess he could afford splashing it all into the air.

Purplish aura swirled around him, flashing inwardly. One bubble contracted, giving birth to another, and another, growing in speed and light intensity. Once it became a consistent thick sphere around Metal, the convoy realised the tables have turned.

"Code blue! Fire at will!"

The sphere shattered in a fantastic show of endless expansion as Metal enabled Maximum Overdrive. The hunter drone's arm dissipated first. Then, Kit 2 fell under its spell. Previous flashes turned outward, set to annihilation. A roaring explosion blew a small crater by the canyon's edge leaving but a set of mangled wheels from the siphon transport.

Remaining hunters fired relentlessly at Metal's position, unaware that the recharge made him much faster. They fell apart as they hovered, unaware that the enemy ever moved from its position.

Flying Dog inherited the truck's sensory abilities and, therefore, could track Metal's movement with great precision. The pilot used the perk to empty half of its warhead count. Jojo 2 knew the warheads would not harm Metal directly because the projectile sought heat signatures, most of which were created by the robot's extra resilient turbine, so he fired the twin Gatling guns at the released explosives.

Rockets set off in a chain reaction all around the robot, sending him into a slight daze and inflicting real damage. Even though Metal had no issues with power consumption anymore, he was still injured in the head and back. Naked circuitry offered Flying Dog a permanent advantage.

It didn't assure Metal would allow the mech to use that advantage. The robot boosted up for a buzzsaw attack at the hover bot. For all its bulk, GUN's mightiest machines had a poor record in melee combat. Metal, on the other hand, excelled in all things short range thanks to the best sparring partners in the world, Sonic included.

The organic hedgehog was getting increasingly more annoyed as he traversed the countryside into Bullet Station's rocky canyons. It wasn't the emo kind of annoyance, but a latent thirst for busting stuff up. Despite being a hero, Sonic's windy nature was all but safe to his environment, and robots. The things he kept bumping into were the kind one would expect after a good bust up.

All of it was Metal's handiwork. Sonic had no idea what the robot expected to get from the chase or what Eggman was really after. Seeing that a GUN agent lay on the ground, likely stunned by one of Egg Hornet's shells, he decided to borrow some ideas. Knowing how easily mushy human foes cracked, he would lose no time with this one.

Sonic approached him slowly, arms at his sides. GUN recruits had a nervous tick when they couldn't see a rival's hands for some reason. Sonic took off the man's helmet without much hassle and glared at him. Jojo 4 thought he was finished for that sneaky glue tactic, so he squirmed defensively.

"What is Eggman after?"

He blinked and looked around. The hedgehog was staring at him. Sonic seriously expected an answer, but the man knew better.

"That's classified."

"You don't even know, huh?"

"He's after Shadow," he said all of a sudden and enabled the rescue beacon in his armour. Jojo 4 eased up as soon as it blipped online. "But we could be wrong. It's Eggman."

The candid answer baffled him, a little. "I'll stop him."

"Why?"

"He won't have my friend."

"Shadow is one of us," Jojo 4 intervened, pointing at his torn suit's insignia. "You can't _have_ that."

"And what's your deal?" He snorted. "Putting Shadow in a can is what Eggman's been trying to do."

Jojo 4 smirked. "That isn't classified, but I won't tell you."

The familiar boom of an incoming ramjet was heard. Sonic knew his cues. He threw the helmet back at the crippled soldier and ran off. Jojo 4 pulled the headpiece close to himself when Sonic left.

"Command, this is Jojo 4. I've instructed Sonic."


	6. The Road Ends Here

**Chapter 6: The Road Ends Here**

Sonic reached the convoy right on time, in his opinion: the battle had already started, the stakes were high and the losing team looked like it needed his help. By _losing team_, he meant Shadow. Metal was having a time of his life with Flying Dog. This simplified things because Sonic could sneak up to the containment truck unchecked and try his luck.

Other combatants thought otherwise. The moment he came within Metal's reach, the robot collided with Sonic in an attempt to send him off the high rocky road into a canyon. The hedgehogs clashed thrice before being separated by the floating mech's laser cannon. Jojo 2 fired the rest of his missiles for good measure, aiming them at Sonic while the laser took a sweeping path towards Metal.

Splitting them was his worst idea yet. Both hedgehogs dodged their respective hits, letting the rockets blow part of the mountain Little Moth was passing to cause a landslide. The mass of rocks that fell on the improvised road made it impossible for reinforcements to reach them by ground.

Little Moth tightened the seal on his helmet and checked if his cabin was secure. Without Kit team, he had to crank out his own hazards. A push of a concealed button under the dashboard released a bit of the cistern's protective liquid from underneath the truck. Bright green slime created noxious fumes as it bubbled onto the rocks. Whatever that thing was, Sonic was sure not to touch it.

He saw Metal leap at the hovering enemy and used his dive to piggyback above the machines, landing on top of the truck that had Shadow captured inside. Sonic won precious seconds while those two duked it out. The trailer's surface seemed aware of the hedgehog's presence as it released hundreds of tiny spider drones to crawl towards him. Sonic hated spiders.

They didn't look threatening, but the idea of having them on his body was way past uncool, so he took a spinning leap towards the driver's cabin. Sonic looked at Little Moth, standing in front of the windshield, unaware of the man's facial expression.

What wouldn't work on Metal would dazzle an organic life form: Jojo 1, the only remaining front guard motorcyclist, fired his tazer at him remotely. Two wires ejected from the device, impaling their sharp edges into Sonic's loin. A sharp pain spread through the hedgehog's body in all directions as muscles contracted. The assailant kept the voltage up by hooking the device to his oversized jetpack while looking for a proper gun.

Metal Sonic interrupted the action by flinging into his organic counterpart, sending him to tumble along the rocky edge. The robot didn't have a moment to lose with the floating monstrosity still in action. Sonic remained a nuisance, too.

The robot did everything his way. He grabbed onto the door handle, tore it off along with an electric shock alarm and used the opening to undo the whole door like a set of enormous clippers. The pilot had nowhere to run.

"Key, please," the robot demanded.

Little Moth reached out for the passenger's seat, picked something up, and turned to face Metal only to find him gone. Sonic took care of the visitor by smashing the scrapheap into the rocks multiple times. A tornado throw plastered the robot into the mountain's wall. From that perspective, he could see that the launch pad was on a mountain top less than twenty klicks away. A behemoth loading vehicle was circling idly around Little Moth's goal point, a multi-stage space rocket. Just a moment longer and the blank cheque was as good as his.

A wave near his head interrupted dreams of spending: Sonic had hopped to the torn doorframe with a smile. "Key, please!"

Once again, Little Moth searched for something on the other seat, but found no one waiting for him on the return. Flying Dog's scorch trail was a good indication of what had happened. In the meantime, the lead pilot disposed of his safety belt and enabled the truck's automatic guidance system. As bendy as the road was on this stretch of the path, they'd reach the destination safely without human interaction.

Jojo 2 was bleeding from a rogue falling out after Metal penetrated his cockpit. His sight was impaired, yet he could resume ramping up the chaos because the hedgehogs wasted a lot of their effort fighting each other, not just GUN. It was difficult to even get to Little Moth's cabin while repair drones started reconstructing the destroyed door.

The second Metal freed himself of Sonic's presence, kicking him into Gatling fire, he lunged to Little Moth for his prize. The agent waited prepared this time. Metal's hand, extended for the trailer's key, was met with a chemical spray. The same green gunk Little Moth smeared the road with poured over his hand, melting the claw away. A bit got on his face, uncovering the more sensitive electronics.

Humiliated, Metal had to retreat, allowing the spider drones to finish repairing the containment truck.

Eggman hailed on Sonic's frequency again. The hedgehog wouldn't enable voice communication for several jumps till a misplaced blast rid him of ground support.

"What do you want now?"

"Sonic, there is no point in this rivalry. Let's stop the convoy first and then we'll see who gets what."

"You got yourself a deal, Egghead!"

As he regained speed, Sonic reached out to shake Metal's hand, and saw that the fingers were missing. Metal was quick to react by replacing the lost claw with a small drill. Attacking Sonic was out of the question for now, but they were not allies.

Sonic understood that Metal had a score to settle with the big floating thing, so he scurried straight for the cabin. Rather than go for the reinforced door built by the drones, he smashed through the passenger's portal, looking for something shiny. Tails zoomed in on a translucent green cube with a sphere inside. That had to be it.

Reaching out was a challenge due to Little Moth's chemical spray. The vapour alone had enough strength to melt one of Sonic's gloves away. Sonic had to back away to think of a better plan. Begrudgingly, he realised said plan was fighting a very resilient GUN machine.

Flying Dog kept Eggman's robot at bay with timed laser blasts. Gatling guns took care of Sonic's approach, but the pilot could not play it in opposite directions the hedgehogs ran in after exchanging glances. Multi-tasking slowed down Jojo 2's reaction time. The two hedgehogs inched closer till they found themselves on the mech's empty warhead containers. He was cornered.

On the verge of defeat, Jojo 2 enabled the mech's electric shield in an attempt to shock the foes off. Unfortunately, the damaged cockpit allowed the discharge to reach the pilot's seat, not only electrocuting him, but also frying control modules in the process.

The hovering machine lit up a warning sign. He had lost control of the systems and it wouldn't take long for sparks to reach the fuel cells.

"Eject. Eject," the emergency system informed.

"Shut up!" the pilot shouted in response. Jojo 2 rammed a fist into his dashboard.

Throttle control malfunctioned from the hit. Exhaust nozzles started spitting out liquid fuel that combusted on the outside rather than inside. Flying Dog was burning inwardly with an ever-increasing cloud of fire pooling right below him. At the same time, torque ran amok out of misaligned nozzles. Rather than blast the machine into the sky from the sheer amount of consumed fuel, the waste spilled all around. The mech was falling.

And the two hedgehogs, still eager to settle their differences with the pilot, now stood in front of him. Jojo 2 snarled defiantly, ready to bust their heads with his bare hands even though electrified muscles contracted to the point they'd start tearing from overexertion.

Command sent him a message clearer than the blazing inferno that engulfed the mech: "Break formation."

A push of a button released the beleaguered operative from his crippled shell, escaping the hedgehogs' wrath. Other members of the team must have gotten a similar message as Jojo 1 turned on the nitro boost on his motorcycle, quickly getting away from the containment vessel. It looked like the rats were jumping ship. Little Moth remained at his station, however. Since no one was left to guard his truck, he decided to spill all the viscous poison the truck's inner casing had. Even if they didn't touch the road surface, the fumes would get the best of them, he believed.

Sonic was literally running up the canyon wall to avoid the toxic hazard. Metal boosted higher into the air. The two had to capture the elusive truck above all else.

"Ho-ho-ho! The road ends here, for you," Eggman announced on Little Moth's radio.

He was right. Three Heavy Hammer robots with a squadron of red E-2000 units had climbed up to his path. Ramming into them would have been suicide, as Jojo 1 experienced when a hammerhead shot his whole vehicle thirty metres into the air. His sturdy jetpack prevented a horrific fall into the bots' hands. The alternative for the lead pilot was to brake and be captured by the hedgehogs…

Eggman wasn't the only one leeching off the comms. "Welcome to the launch party, Little Moth. Advance group A is serving refreshments in three-two-one."

GUN wanted to make sure the pilot made the right decision, so they fired the satellite beam into the passage leading to the goal.

"No…" he whispered, seeing the road disappear from existence. They fired way beyond the ambush on purpose, making it impossible to continue. That's it. He was done for.

Both Sonics reached his cabin by the time, breaking in on each side. They were angry.

"Get. Out," they spoke simultaneously.

Little Moth couldn't use the spray to despatch both enemies and survive, so he clapped his hands together and kicked back in the chair. "Gladly!"

Before he could successfully eject, however, Metal introduced the drill hand to the man's jetpack while Sonic left him a goodbye punch in the liver. Little Moth's chair ejected him away from a further beat-down, allowing Sonic to safely grab the key lodged next to the spray gun. He could have ended Metal's life right there, but he preferred saving that of another.

The hedgehog ignored spider robot to reach the rear of the truck, a heavy uniform metallic slab with a virtual projection of cogs and sprockets surrounded by a large ticking wheel. Intuitively, Sonic placed the cube in the middle of the projection, making it spin. He smiled as the hologram turned green, but it was not all.

It asked for "key B". Sonic had nothing of the sort. Nobody told him it even existed!

Metal Sonic had more bad news: Little Moth pushed a self-destruct switch when he kicked back and disabled the truck's motion control. Digging around the cabin unveiled that the detonation mechanism connected to a two-minute countdown was inside Shadow's cistern. The container had a forward drive of its own. The truck became a runaway bomb, heading for a man-made crater.

"Tada-dada-dadaaa!" a cheerful tone reached True Blue at a moment of loss.

"Tails!"

It wasn't just the communicator. The fox brought his Tornado 2 from the other side of the mountain. Transforming the aircraft into its X-wing shape allowed the prodigy to approach the truck from the top.

"Am I happy to see you or what!" Sonic exclaimed into the air with a smile gleaming below a pair of moist eyes.

"Sonic, Tails, this isn't a time for hugs! One of GUN's meatheads ran off with the second code generator!" Eggman made himself known.

The scientist was watching them from a canyon below for a great part of the trip and found it fitting to emerge. Knuckles stood on Egg Hornet's wing. The heroes were stunned, to say the least. Whatever his allegiances were now, they could use a hand.

"We'll stop the truck," Eggman continued and pointed at the hero with his sidekick. "You two take care of the key."

Sonic hopped onto Tornado 2's tail without a hint of objection. He gave the fox a pat on the back. "I owe you one."

Tails was about to speed up, but something grabbed hold of the right bottom wing. He turned his head to see that Metal was trying to climb up onto the plane, but needed help. The fox looked at Sonic worriedly.

The hedgehog offered his copy a boost up, motioning for Tails to do his thing. "It's a party, Tails. Everyone's invited!"

Sonic managed to find room for two in his usual spot. Normally, he'd expect the circumstances to occur in a food poisoning-induced fever dream, but he was there for real, touching Metal Sonic's frame without destructive intent.

Tails glanced back at Sonic, feeling a shake in his knees because Metal sat behind him. "How much time?"

"Eighty seconds," the robot replied.

"Hold tight!"

The fox smacked the big flight glasses onto his face and pressed an equally vocal button. The blue flame coming out of the exhaust turned yellow, and then white as the plane broke the sound barrier only to rage faster still.

Up in the sky, Sonic could see the whole extent of their battle, past and present. Destruction ranged for miles in every direction. It wasn't just the hedgehogs who were fighting. Tails and Eggman caused a fair share of smoky explosions to reach the location. Looking forward, the hero saw a pristine launch station erected on the highest peak at the edge of Rail Canyon. A space rocket was primed for launch even though its empty nose was pulled apart at the top. Presumably, the cistern with Shadow inside would have gone there. One thing had gone right so far.

He glanced back to check how Knuckles and Eggman were doing. The doctor didn't try to hurt him directly throughout the mission, but he found it easy to relate to Tails' doubts. Knuckles jumped off the Egg Hornet and punched the container, causing it to flash green from edge to edge, concentrating into the focal point. The hit toppled the runaway on its side to slide towards the end of the road, where Eggman's heavies stopped it completely.

It was up to Sonic now. The plane has approached the two agents on jetpacks close enough to intercept. Sonic didn't know which one had the key, but Metal suggested going for the bulkier soldier, Jojo 2.

GUN felt threatened by the rapidly changing situation. "Jojo 2, check your six."

"Hmm?" The man bobbed his head. "What bull..."

There were no ranged weapons left. He'd spent everything during the previous fight. A standard-issue combat knife would have to do.


	7. Break in Half

**Chapter 7: Break in Half**

A blue blur expanded into the menace GUN knew by the name of Sonic. Jojo 2 learned to hate that name. He braced for impact as the hedgehog dived onto the man's back, pitching him off course. Something heavy hit them a heartbeat later, making it difficult for the pilot to correct his trajectory.

Metal Sonic had used them to springboard towards Jojo 1, who possessed the actual key. Organic Sonic played his part according to the plan, by tap-dancing on the second agent's head.

"Get off!" Jojo 2 exclaimed, slashing the knife awkwardly enough to bounce it from the rocket pack's casing and injure his own arm.

Sonic eluded the swings, but didn't stop. "Give me the key!"

"I don't have it!" he barked back. The knife wasn't proving much useful, so he fiddled with the jetpack's controls to loop wildly in mid-air and get rid of the pesky limpet.

The hedgehog wouldn't let go; the acrobatic hoops only made the agent dizzy. When he decided to end it once and for all by strangling the hedgehog, however, Jojo 1 collided with him, throwing Sonic off to latch onto Jojo 2's boot.

"I'll deal with you later," the heavier agent grumbled to his colleague. Jojo 1 would pay for the blunder. What was that idiot thinking? It should have been easy enough to manoeuvre away from the only other friendly unit in the sky.

Jojo 2 realised Metal Sonic made controlling the flight extremely difficult for Jojo 1. Something looked different about him, though. The first numeral had received a bigger jetpack for the mission, and he wouldn't tell anyone why.

A second glance at Jojo 1's rocket boost explained what exactly he was thinking. Unfortunately, Sonic noticed it, too. A circular attachment appeared on the side of Jojo 2's propulsion system. It had the same markings and style as the cube key. Jojo 1 had bumped into his ally to keep the second code generator away from Metal. It didn't prove much help as long as both of them were engaged in melee combat.

Sonic ran up the man's body quicker than he could discard the shoe. "Now you do!" he exclaimed while unclipping the attached magnetic plate. "Now you don't!"

The hedgehog jumped off with the loot. A wave in Tails' direction would bring his ride home.

GUN disagreed. "Jojo 2, retrieve the key. Reinforcements inbound."

"Copy…that."

He had to change direction to chase down the fastest thing alive. At the rate the hedgehog was falling, he'd never make it, so Jojo 2 decided to employ some human ingenuity by covertly chucking the knife at Jojo 1, who was heading to the ground a lot faster thanks to increased weight. Metal understood the purpose of the trade-in, so he stopped mauling the operative.

As expected, Jojo 1 stopped his descent close to the surface and maxed out the jetpack's throttle to ram into the blue thief. To make it more effective, he thrust the knife forward, adding to its velocity.

Sonic felt the excruciating impact. He was not flying quickly enough to be pierced, but the blade still stuck in his back. The hedgehog attempted to pull it out, unsuccessfully. It allowed Jojo 2 to catch up with True Blue on his own terms. The man grabbed onto Sonic's shoulders and headbutted the opponent.

His helmet cracked above a blood-stained forehead. At first, Jojo 2 grinned in hope of it being Sonic's blood. Adrenaline made it difficult to tell who suffered the most till a wave of sizzling hurt splashed over the agent's face whilst the hedgehog barely winced from the hit.

Jojo 2 had practiced on rows of bricks back in training. It was impossible for a daft hedgehog to be stronger. Soured by the revelation, he pulled the knife out unceremoniously, and used the resulting painful distraction to grab the code plate.

In fact, the knife was so effective the first time, he might as well have slit Sonic's throat and gotten several hundred medals for beating every other punk on the planet to the goal. That agonising expression on his peach-coloured muzzle was delicious, but peace would come for you, hedgehog!

Jojo 2 raised the bloody knife and saw his hand extend towards Sonic when another blur, darker in hue, caught the hand to thrust it back into the owner's abdomen. Metal Sonic made sure to swipe at an angle that went upwards to the man's ribcage. Red droplets coming from the gap and the helmet's seal were his prize.

Metal grabbed both the injured hedgehog and the code plate. Tails' plane was waiting for them to offer a smooth landing. The robot couldn't wait to complete his mission and destroy the contemptible life forms. Jojo 2 was dealt with definitively and Jojo 1 possessed insufficient fuel in his damaged pack to reach them.

Despite such setbacks, GUN could not allow the enemy to succeed. The reinforcements promised for Jojo 2 came right on time for his comrade. Jojo 1 didn't have to suffer a fuelless fall into the canyon's footing. GUN sent the launch pad's loading vehicle down into the shady gorges near the base to survey the standoff. The air current from its four circular turbines assured a smooth landing on top of the tortoise-shaped heavy. For all its bulk, the airborne machine looked more like a mobile fortress than a crane.

"Enjoying the party, Jojo 1?" the aircraft's pilot asked in a patronising tone.

"Gah. Shouldn't you be sharpening pencils at HQ?"

"Easy there, little guy. My baby's ready for more heavy lifting…if saving the alloys is too much for you."

Upon saying that, the pilot clanked together a set of horizontal clasps at the bottom. These were the only part suggesting the craft's role in logistics. They differed in colour and build quality from the rest of the ship, as if tacked on at the last minute. Three decks of missiles on both sides and multiple machineguns able to befriend the environment with killer precision were dedicated to a wholly different standard. And it was just a prototype.

The kind of knowledge made Tails regret sniffing around for GUN data. If the military decided to use the full extent of the LZ-12R-2 prototype's ammunition on his tiny plane, there wouldn't be enough left to call it scrap. With both Sonics entrusting their lives to him, there was no room for failure. Tails downed the accelerator to return to Shadow's containment vessel, away from the secure launch site.

Eggman waited for them impatiently on the ground while Knuckles spoke gibberish at dark hedgehog's chamber. He was trying to retrieve something sealed within the tank, but the layer of toxins under the casing made it impossible. Only by opening the lock would they manage to get inside and divide the loot. Fairly. The doctor smirked at the notion while looking at his squad of idle robots.

Metal Sonic proved himself useful, considering the AI's penchant to betray. He'd successfully landed on the Tornado 2 with plenty of time to disarm the bomb.

Everyone was so intent on having the hedgehogs return to the ground they didn't spot Jojo 1 riding a ramjet-equipped drone. Those small planes were a real thorn in Eggman's side: extremely fast and very dangerous despite having limited range and little chance of returning to base after deployment.

The agent went for a high-risk tactic by taking one launched by the prototype. It was being controlled remotely, and the operator clicked the one button that always got the colour red.

Tails wished he hadn't looked back that time. Sonic and Metal were on his plane, but the ramjet's flashbang attack blinded both heroes and overpowered the robot's sensors. Jojo 1 was free to grab their puzzle piece.

By the time the fox regained his sight, the enemy flew a considerable distance away, heading for the launch site. There was only one way to stop him: shooting the jet down. Tails aimed meticulously. He knew that it would take one false shot and the entire craft would explode, destroying the key plate in the process.

Tracing bullets zipped past Jojo 1. He thought the fox had missed his single chance, so he cheered. The agent even thought of breaking the plate to assure the enemy's loss, but command advised against it.

Soon, he would land and enjoy a victor's treatment, he thought. The ramjet was losing altitude at an alarming rate, though. Tails hadn't missed entirely. Several shots cut the propulsion system off the bottom of the rocket plane. Jojo 1 was low on fuel, too…

"We're running out of time!" Tails yelled, receiving a reassuring thumbs-up from Sonic before the hero took a dive.

Metal jumped off in pursuit, boosting to win the flight. Sonic was not an enemy yet, but the hedgehogs still clashed several times before they reached a disheartened Jojo 1. It was now a question of who would make him fail.

"You want it? Then, go get it!" the agent yelled before throwing the key into the canyon below.

A fake sigh reached his earpiece. "QM will eat you alive, Jojo 1. But that's why I'm here!"

His colleague was waiting for them at the bottom. Armed with enough missiles to level a city block, the armoured aircraft distributed them along the hedgehogs' predicted path.

Sonic pushed Metal aside, sending them to fly to the key from opposite sides. Sonic wanted to get to a small canyon peak and use it as an accelerator track. Metal went for a more straightforward approach by boosting. Maximum Overdrive as well as air gymnastics were an exhausting experience for the systems. Plus, he still required repairs. Numerous explosions that trailed behind him made the way down a gruelling exercise.

None of the above offered a reason to preserve any power. The last leg of the chase would be his.

"Come on, Metal…" Eggman whispered to himself.

He saw the assault ship concentrate on his creation rather than Sonic. Two frontal machineguns fired up continuously at his frame while smoke from explosions trailing behind his engine's fire bursts covered an increasing part of the hull from view. Eggman squinted at Sonic, trying to keep himself cool enough not to send his robots after the hedgehog. The doctor was not used to spectating failure.

True Blue reached the ground first to use friction on the return. A steady drop further down in the U-shaped crevice helped him achieve mind-boggling velocity, turning the entire drop into one bright blue steak. The visual wouldn't cease for over a second, making it impossible to tell if the hedgehog was going up or back down to gain even more speed. Only when the rockets started destroying the terrain it became obvious that Sonic squeezed everything he had into the dash and escaped Eggman's trained eye.

He reached the uppermost point of the mountain for a swift kick to the top rock for balance. Sonic saw the plate tumble in slow motion as well as Metal's grubby claw aiming at it from a wall of debris. The hero extended his arm as far as he could and opened his mouth, the tongue hanging in a silly manner. Metal was a supersonic hair away from snatching it when Sonic slipped it under his arm.

Tails managed to pick his friend up while Metal kept accelerating downwards, attracting all the remaining rockets. His impact caused a small earthquake in the surrounding area, downing a peak next to the launch site as quickly as GUN's explosives did.

If robots felt anger, that was as expressive as it could get, Sonic thought.

A gash on his side that wasn't there before mystified the hedgehog. Surely, it wasn't Metal's doing?

"S-Sonic!" Eggman exclaimed, seeing the hedgehog fly back on the Tornado 2.

There were eight seconds left. Sonic threw the key plate to Eggman to place atop the first key. The virtual lock spun in multiple directions before disappearing, allowing them to enter Shadow's containment vessel. Nobody had the time to relish the complexity of the lock's mechanism, a magnetic clasp powered by the captive's own energy, coupled with highly corrosive waste to protect the outer layer from piercing.

Three seconds left.

Eggman rushed inside, knowing where the bomb would be even before the thick cool smoke cleared enough to view the contents. He had to jump-slide over a bulky slab in the middle during a run for the finish line at the other end of the container. The timer counted down to half a second when the doctor struck the mechanism offline with an EMP chip. It was…an experience.

The man slid down to the floor, wheezing from the sudden rush. "They don't make energy drinks as they used to."

In front of him floated an egg-shaped capsule made of pure diamond. For an outsider, it looked just like an enormous single piece of glass, but Eggman knew better. GUN worked for a long time to manufacture a substance resilient enough to withstand the dark hedgehog's efforts. The capsule was filled with a luminous jelly-like substance, much like the stasis liquid used in Eggman's factories.

They used very advanced materials to imprison the hedgehog. It was the only explanation for the fact Shadow's pod floated inside the cistern, defying gravity. The downed trailer's lining glowed green like the Master Emerald, only brighter than it did back in the shrine. Eggman attributed the magnificent view to crystal clean slices from the emerald's centre. GUN cut the jewel in a way that prevented cracks or visible seams between separate plates. And the guardian's impetuous counteractions.

The scientist couldn't help appreciating their efforts. The information GUN provided him thus far would result in the greatest conquest yet. Grinning widely between tired breaths, Eggman did his best to suppress a guffaw: he was now inside the most expensive device in GUN's possession. The Master Emerald, Metal Sonic, the blasted pincushion and even…him: everyone played their part to further the success.

The doctor's eyes flickered at the sight of a shadow trailing into the chamber. Composure, composure, he thought while exiting the chamber to allow Sonic some privacy.

It felt pretty cramped inside despite there being only two pieces of truly man-made technology, the bomb on the one side and an entrance handle on the other. Sonic stepped inside with some hesitation. The flooring was frighteningly slick, which made him hope Knuckles would take his time before entering. GUN's treatment of the Master Emerald bordered on insanity. Sonic wanted to get out ASAP. Walking over the ME felt wrong.

Metal arrived just in time. He eyed organic Sonic as the hedgehog stared at Shadow locked inside the floating pod. Not intent to waste time, Metal grabbed the front end to tug it out, coaxing Sonic to follow suit. The weightless vessel floated out of the chamber into Knuckles and Tails' view for the first time.

The moment it left the tube-like space, Sonic felt an immediate increase in weight. Still aching from the fight, he didn't manage to hold it up, so the cell fell to the ground. The hedgehog cringed when it crashed open, sending Shadow's body into a tumble cycle, liquid spilling all over the ground. The prisoner did not look good.

Knuckles went inside the tank, leaving Shadow to the others' care. Seeing what GUN had done to the Master Emerald made his blood boil. They didn't just break the gem. They sawed the pieces to create a Chaos-negating effect for a prison. Even though he was the guardian, the placement of the pieces made him feel weak. Whoever assisted GUN in the scheme knew a lot about the gem's powers, and they were better off dead than spreading such vampiric vibes.

Years of fasting and appeals to the ancients wouldn't wash the shame off his guardianship. Knuckles would have sworn, but the emerald demanded respect even in besmirched form. He could feel its plight.

It wasn't mere humiliation. The voices cried separation even when Knuckles began peeling the pieces off and sticking them together. Once he stripped the inner hollow clean to conceal the plates, the harsh truth dawned upon him: the truck had less than half of the Master Emerald!

Sonic was in for an even greater disappointment. Eggman's robots encircled the hedgehog while he examined Shadow. They were prepared for anything. Eggman took a front view seat to relish the hedgehog's revival attempts. Shadow's heart wouldn't make itself known and the Ultimate Life Form hadn't taken a breath since being rescued. Sonic checked his limp friend's mouth, as dazed as he was clueless.

"Is something the matter?" the doctor asked maliciously.


	8. Call Me Knuckles

**Chapter 8: Call Me Knuckles**

The hedgehog clenched his fists when he uncovered the truth. He glared at Eggman's feet, unable to raise his head. "This…this isn't Shadow! It's one of your friggin' copies!"

"Now, now. There is no need for such language. It is no mere copy," he spoke as he bent down to Sonic's level, a beady eye turned in Metal's direction. "It's new, improved, ten times stronger than before! I and Metal Sonic didn't want GUN to proliferate experimental android technology they had no understanding of."

"So you tricked me, Tails and Knuckles into-"

The doctor interrupted him with a chortle. "Knuckles is here for the Master Emerald. As for your involvement, I did ask you to stay out and I did say it wasn't Tails' business." He grinned, relishing the hedgehog's shock. The joy would have been sublime had GUN not called the heavy assault ship down so early. Eggman's drones had nothing to counter it with. "But I shouldn't stop you from finding the real Shadow."

Knuckles exited the empty container. "Sonic, the other half of the ME is on that GUN rocket thing. I'm going."

"No…" Sonic whispered, receiving an assuring smirk from Eggman.

Eggman got up for a slow walk around the stunned hedgehog, inviting his prime creation to join in.

"Tell me, Metal. What does organic Sonic feel right now?"

"Inconsistent breathing. Abnormal perspiration. No improvement in intellectual capacity," the robot explained in a way he considered clever.

Sonic snorted. "Tell me, Eggman. Why doesn't your best robot know shit about feelings?"

On a regular day, Eggman would have thrown a fit. He had more than enough troops at his disposal to cripple the pesky hedgehog, yet he was the only one to see drama unfurl in the background while the surrounded hedgehog focussed on the doctor's puppeteering. Little Moth had managed to climb up the canyon wall, steal the discarded keys and offer them to be intercepted by a ramjet.

Eggman shook his head, faking disappointment. He didn't want to prolong the conversation, but Sonic needed a good jolt to bring his priorities where they should be, everything with GUN's insignia. The man turned at the launch site demonstratively to witness the setback.

"My best robot didn't just lose his keys. You should get them if you still think you can save anyone today." Upon saying those words, the villain moved behind the encirclement. "I insist."

The E-2000 mechs armed their laser cannons. Eggman would have this round. He had nothing to stay for, anyway. A loud boom was escaping them already when Knuckles and Sonic jumped onto the Tornado 2.

Eggman switched his attention to the bold agent, whom he found jumping and waving at the edge of the canyon. Perhaps, he had hoped for GUN to rescue him along with the unlock codes. The doctor grinned at his own opportune curiosity.

"I'd like to have a word with you, Little Moth."

The agent turned around, smiling awkwardly as command wouldn't respond. His jetpack was defunct and he really didn't want to end up on the bottom of the canyon again. Elites did not normally exchange words with the enemy, only bullets, so it didn't surprise Little Moth to find the side arm's trigger broken off and the knife missing. Metal acted faster than the eye could see.

"In private."

A blink separated Little Moth from losing his headgear. His tazer lay in Eggman's hand. Fraternising with the enemy was a breach of protocol. They'd pull him from the roster, or draft him to permanent duty in Holoska. There was no way he'd go for it. Little Moth stepped back to fall into the canyon, but Metal bound him before the agent could do anything stupid.

"I'm not limited by conventions, so…" he began with a snap of his fingers.

Metal twisted the captive's arm at the signal, making him scream.

"That noise will be code for agreement. I'm sure it's all within your silly protocol, but if you disagree, Metal can help you improvise with other types of feedback." Eggman connected his fingers for another snap.

Tails' plane had burnt most of its juice so far, which made catching up with an enemy that was, essentially, a remote-controlled missile, difficult. Still, he tried his best while the passengers engaged in some idle conversation to break the tension.

"Haven't seen you for a while, Knuckles."

"You know how it is. Guarding the Master Emerald, protecting it from Eggmen, bats, and now a bunch more people."

"I'm sorry."

"Eh, it's fine. Just gotta make it in time or I'll lose my job," he replied, trying to sound humorous.

The hedgehog was at a loss to solving his plight. Knuckles slipped into silence and Sonic didn't feel like it was a good idea to coax him to share. Tails turned back to save the day.

"They're launching a ME-lined capsule aboard that rocket at the Sun. It's called 'Project Nova'," the fox explained. "GUN have reporters on that station, Sonic. If we stop the launch, we'll be criminals."

"I'll show them what's criminal…" Sonic mumbled.

He was too busy tracing the jet. It returned with both keys into a vacant pod atop the LZ-12R-2 prototype. The moment the slot shut tight, the aircraft fired an explosive from the lowest platform. It flew between the X-shaped wings of the Tornado 2. A warning shot, no doubt.

No warning would discourage them from completing the mission. GUN announced their own resolve by opening all missile shafts on the carrier's sides. Three storeys of MLRS cases stared dead on at the tiny plane.

Since Tails had no intention of slowing down or changing direction, he snuck lower into the pilot's seat and gave Sonic one last glance. "We're gonna lose some paint in here."

He wished he had kept the eyes on the sky as multiple warheads headed in his direction. They weren't patterned, launched chaotically on purpose. Tails could imagine the attacker's glee pushing random buttons to make dodging all the more difficult. Fiery lights stormed towards them, carrying a thin line of see-through smoke. The pilot wouldn't allow anything to block visual contact.

"Bite the tail, guys!" Tails exclaimed all of a sudden.

The passengers blinked at one another, but they got the message as soon as the first rockets started whizzing past. The plane spun wildly, doing corkscrews in an extremely limited corridor, so that the wings wouldn't bump into the next passing explosive. Tails shook the controls in knee-jerk fashion to the point of feeling the vibration between his teeth.

Sonic felt it, too. A near hit slid him off his spot, forcing him to grab onto the hull with everything he had, mouth included. Unfortunately for the hedgehog, he latched onto the plane's rudder, which moved rapidly left and right according to Tails' controls.

Knuckles simplified his own predicament by smashing both spiked gloves into the fuselage. The dents were just enough to keep him seated on the aircraft's tail, provided Tails didn't change pitch every split second he got feedback from the plane. It annoyed the echidna to no end. Knuckles' chest could withstand cannon balls and guardianship made the abdomen impervious to pain. However, having his entire body flailed and banged along its gravity centre left enough bruises for him to consider yelping.

It was only the first volley.

The little genius had an idea for which he expected forgiveness from his battered friends. Blowing up a row of missiles that headed in their direction would have depleted whatever ammunition he had left after fighting towards the battlefield. To make a safe landing, he had to strike at the source.

Tails popped the safety cap off the trigger when he came within firing range. The leftover rockets turning around to strike them from behind were the least of his worries now. He grinned excitedly. Goliaths fell in the end, and Tails would slay his in three-two-one.

Bullets sprayed from the plane's machinegun. Tails didn't aim accurately; heat and velocity alone would secure a swift victory. Sonic would be so proud!

The toothy smirk melted into a gaping hole while his eye ridges bounced high in surprise. Despite a wall of fire blinding the enemy, the prototype deflected his hit into canyon walls. Tails continued shooting for a second longer before GUN's own machineguns silenced his weapon. Their precision frightened him as well as the fact he was allowed to fly closer.

Sonic exchanged glances with Knuckles to prepare for a jump onto the hostile aircraft. They loosened the grip on the plane for a straight go, a deed that did not go unnoticed by the opposing team.

A black cloud blasted into view before them. Tails ducked underneath it and spun the plane upside-down to avoid the next one. They were within reach of the launch site's flak cannons. Tails had to fly lower to avoid being shredded by another blast.

Decreasing altitude created a second hurdle in the form of rocky peaks. Tails had to twist the controls into a knot to avoid hitting the protrusions. Stress was starting to overwhelm the boy. The mirrors revealed that there was no way back, nothing but destruction sowed by the prototype's missiles. Proximity to the main peak made it impossible to rise. He was being stomped into the ground even though Sonic counted on him. The only way to give him a chance was flying up.

Having driven the fox to the nadir, GUN were in position to send him reeling. The assault ship fired several ramjets out of the vertical shafts in a flash. Machineguns traced the air above their heads. The Tornado 2 couldn't ascend while the rocks grew taller on approach to the mountain.

"We're gonna crash!" Tails exclaimed.

"No, you're not. Stay put, Knux."

Sonic jumped off the plane to buzzsaw forward. The machine was no match for his speed. Neither were GUN, or so he thought.

A stray missile exploded beneath Tails' craft, forcing him to rise on instinct. The plane flew through a relentless stream of armour-piercing bullets. He could see the top wings being clipped from existence as he lost control of the flight. Tails had no means of turning back, however. By the time he clutched the steering handles strong enough to change direction, he had to put the hands back up to protect his eyes: the ramjets started bombarding them with flashbangs.

GUN were kiting him up into flak fire. Dazed by the flashes, Tails couldn't steer properly. His goggles proved useless against the blinding hazards. Still, he knew certain death awaited at that rate, so he pulled the nose up as far as the chassis allowed him. The plane would draw a full loop in the air to swing down.

Sonic was yelling into the communicator non-stop during the manoeuvre, but the enemy made it impossible to hear or see anything but annihilation. With Tails disarmed, the prototype used the descent to trim his bottom wings. The missiles concentrated on Sonic's approach, in the meantime. Unlike the hedgehog, they could fly straight into obstacles, freeing the path for more projectiles.

The Tornado 2 coughed on the spot. Tails squinted at the cockpit for clues even though he knew the reason: one of the bullets punctured the fuel tank. The fox had little time left till the final nosedive.

His blue friend had to ditch any thoughts of saving him. The rockets blew up enough rock to completely blind the hedgehog. Breathing became a pain thanks to the dust. GUN were no better than Eggman in protecting the environment. Hopefully, they were just as bad at safeguarding their toys.

The gunship's rotor blades guided Sonic among the shadows. When the sound turned loud enough, he stopped to look above. There it was, the dark green underbelly of the beast.

A laser marker traced behind the hedgehog. They weren't aware of his approach, but the cloud of dust made them uncomfortable enough to fly higher. Sonic had to think on his feet.

Back in the sky, Knuckles realised Tails' flying days were over as far as the Tornado 2 was concerned. He didn't want to bail on the kid, just that he was trying too hard to get him close enough. GUN clearly didn't want anyone in the sky around the launch site, so the fox would be fine if he kept distance.

Knuckles crawled up to the cockpit to pat the genius on the back. "You take care of yourself, Tails."

"Knuckles, no!"

"Don't do anything I wouldn't do!" he shouted back as he raised his arms to glide towards the assault ship.

It kept tracking Tails' plane with a dying line of projectiles while more of its attention seemed to drop to ground level. The pilot must have noticed Sonic in the smoke below. Knuckles' landing would go undetected. With luck, he'd still get some punchy time.

The echidna spun half the distance to the aircraft despite his wishes. He was wrong about the pilot; they saw through his plan. A rocket's exhaust flame charred his snout while another rogue warhead nearly tore his arm off with its wings. Those rockets weren't built to explode on contact with a light target like Knuckles.

That was why Sonic had great concern about Tails. He leaped out of the dust lining the canyon to grab onto the loader's clasps. The machine rose above the smoke, allowing the gun operator to see the stowaway. Their first counter-measure shocked Sonic to let go of the metal frame he was holding onto. Had he not hung down by the knees, the hedgehog would have fallen off completely.

"At least Eggman doesn't use that..." Sonic huffed out between jitters.

A much more familiar sound reminded him of what Eggman did use routinely, guns. The one fixated under what looked like the pilot's cockpit whirred into action. Sonic had to swing from clutch to clutch to escape the bullets. The way the gun rotated prevented Sonic from going for the pilot's seat, so he had to look for an alternative route.

Knuckles had a less subtle tactic. His dash towards the ship let him grab a souvenir, a missile with a depleted fuel cell. The echidna held it high in his thick gloves to ward off any underestimation of his power. Echidnas were infamously bad at handling explosives.

Shocking one was a bad decision on GUN's part. Knuckles responded by smashing the front end of the missile against the ship's hull, which resulted in a powerful blast. The explosion chucked him towards one of the ship's turbines. Loud chopping rotor blades were eager to suck him into the air grinder. Knuckles grinned awkwardly. The plan worked almost as intended: the protective shield stopped zapping him as much. He just had to sort out the impending doom part.

His shoes couldn't get a good grip on the smooth surface at the rotor's circular rim. The hands were busy holding him on the edge of falling, so circumstances forced Knuckles to use his head. He rammed the casing with his skull hard enough to make a decent fracture. The assault ship wavered on the spot. It had two propulsion engines on the bulky front, but blades provided stability when changing direction.

GUN had to smoke him away from the rotor, so they called one of the ramjets off from chasing Tails. It boomed above the aircraft to release a swarm of flash pellets. These got the echidna to move quickly within the top machineguns' range. Both frontal barrels located on the ship's sides turned to face the echidna in the warmest form of greeting a weapon could offer.

Knuckles had already used his head, though. It gave him ideas. Rather than lunge for the guns to smash them before they'd spin into action, he managed to grab hold onto the low-flying rocket plane to turn its exhaust against the gunship's fuselage. The flame weakened its armour while Knuckles managed to keep the ramjet in his grip. A few more burnt hairs only made a Master Emerald guardian stronger.

He knew a machine would feel the punch more acutely with a bit of heat applied. Knuckles swung low into the corner of a cover plate to break a hole big enough for his fists to crunch through completely. The echidna broke inside the ship with a glorious grunt.

The locals were not prepared for his arrival. Knuckles saw the pilot steer the ship with one hand while the other was correcting the bottom machinegun to target Sonic on a virtual screen. Another agent sank in astonishment at the intruder: Jojo 1 slowly took a step away from Knuckles.

Knuckles saw that as well as the reason for his worry. Jojo 1 glanced at the pilot, who had the full key plate on his control panel. The guardian squeezed his fists together and took off before the agent could warn his ally.

Alarmed by the predicament, Jojo 1 quickly scanned the environment for something heavy. Metal had stripped him of weapons during the jetpack standoff, and the prototype's ammunition hold was off limits to temporary crew members. Desperate to carry out his orders, the agent pulled a fire extinguisher off the wall to smash it against the echidna.

The blow threw him off balance. Knuckles was strong, but gravity affected even the last of the echidnas. Jojo 1 wasted no time: as soon as the intruder fell to the floor, he proceeded to whack the pressurised cylinder against Knuckles' head. Normally, the action would knock out the opponent, but GUN did not prepare him for one whose head might have been the strongest part of the body. When the echidna got back to his feet, completely disregarding consecutive blows, the agent froze on the spot.

He angered one of Sonic's friends, the one that forced the military to put covert ops all over the jungle after capture team failed to contain him. Jojo 1 had nowhere to run as the doors leading out of the bridge were locked and the cramped space had nothing sturdier to throw at the incensed guardian.

Knuckles punched the enemy down to the floor and jumped him to make sure he remembered the error of his ways. Jojo 1 squirmed to evade the spiky blows that could easily flatten his face. He used the extinguisher to block the fists off by hitting it against the echidna's thin arms. It only annoyed the assailant.

The echidna grabbed the troublesome safeguard with one hand and primed the other one at the man's head. "They call me Knuckles. That's why."

Jojo 1 tugged the metal cylinder. Not even a budge. Rather than gulp at the killer resolve in Knuckles' eyes, he went the way of a seasoned GUN agent.

"They also call you Knucklehead. That's why," he said before pulling the safety pin off the nozzle.

A gust of cold carbon dioxide flushed out at the echidna's head. One rogue breath made his nose burn while the tiniest drops turned his grin into an embittered grimace. The eyes stung like chuff, forcing him to pull away while the agent raged on. Jojo 1 wished for security to send him shots of the scene. He was winning!

Not only that, he made the echidna crawl away from him in fear. Jojo 1 kept the stream directed at the echidna to slow him down, but he soon realised it was not the gas he wanted to avoid; the guardian shuffled towards the keys to rescue the Master Emerald.

The pilot must have been aware of the plot as he abandoned the machinegun controls to pick up the plate and throw it at Jojo 1. It stopped Knuckles dead in his tracks. The action also startled the agent so that he dropped the fire extinguisher in a loud clank. It rolled away, leaving white mist to disperse on the floor.

Unchecked by persistent gunfire, Sonic grasped the opportunity to dash towards the front of the ship. The vibrations inside brought eager delight to his face, and he was ready to simmer in the action. Sonic somersaulted into the hull quick enough for the spin to slash through the armour and let him break into the command post from below.

Sonic was happy to see the key right in front of him, in the trembling hands of an agent that clearly wanted to be elsewhere. The hero had enough determination and muscle power to make that happen. Knuckles would help, too.

Blue Blur extended an open hand and motioned at the key. "It's over. You can give it to me or-" Sonic began, turning towards Knuckles.

As he glanced at the side, the hedgehog saw the pilot stand up from his seat and aim a pistol at Jojo 1. He fired without hesitation, startling the intruders while the target stood perfectly still. It was a high price to pay for being in the wrong place at a decisive time.

The bullet went through the key plate, shattering it into the tiniest particles that disappeared in the thin layer of gas on the floor. Nothing remained of the projectile after impact. Whatever the pilot's plan had been, he completed it and put the pistol back in its pouch.

He never faced the enemy, choosing to keep his back turned on them. Only a muted cough revealed that uneasy currents flowed under the solid surface.

"Now, it really is over. Get off my ship."


	9. Like an Accident

**Chapter 9: Like an Accident**

Knuckles stared at the key to the Master Emerald's rescue break into nothingness before his eyes. It was there, the solution to everything that made him seething mad! The kidnapping, bruises and environmental destruction, even Eggman's audacity. Knuckles had sworn to forgive GUN for their misdeeds as soon as the Master Emerald returned to its rightful place.

They crushed that oath and stomped his kindness into the ground just because they could. The echidna trembled in loss, confused and embittered by the event. He'd settle the score with GUN. Make them know a guardian's anguish. And he'd start from the ones responsible.

He lunged at the cruel pilot with a feral cry. Jojo 1 tried to stop him, but was thrust into the floor by a fist of rage that left a deep imprint in his sturdy armour. No one would halt the wrath of the righteous, and Knuckles had every right to deliver it.

"Wait!" Sonic cried. "Think with your head!"

The hedgehog stood no chance against his heavy determination. Sonic knew the heartache Knuckles was experiencing, but more violence wouldn't solve their plight. They'd find a way to fix everything and disregard the deep shade it would bring to the heroes' names. The kind of passion that burned in Knuckles' eyes was beyond fixing, though. He wanted to destroy, undo the single man evil enough to shoot and kill a living thing.

His blood would not improve Knuckles' relationship with the Master Emerald. If only he stopped for a moment to listen.

Sonic's reflections found mutuality with the pilot. He turned around to present more scorn for the echidna. The agent wore no helmet, so they could see the sour expression on the middle-aged redhead's face. A short beard adorning his jawline followed the grimace while a fingertip pressed a video feed button. He was clearly unhappy to press it.

A holographic image of Rouge appeared in front of him, standing between the pilot and Knuckles. She sat bound to a bolted chair, a turret gun attached to the back of her head. The camera moved for a close-up of the image. They pressed the barrel tight enough to make the spot sore. She must have been stuck there for a while.

"Another step, echidna, and the bat girl's brains explode on the wall."

Knuckles stopped, astonished by the image. How could they? Torture one of their own to…

He grabbed onto his head. This was too much. To make it worse, the projection drew a line literally a step further.

"You monster," Knuckles hissed.

The agent laughed in return. His eyes twinkled with the same maniacal disbelief Knuckles experienced a moment ago. "I caught her trying to sabotage the rocket's engines. This grants me carte blanche to handle the prisoner as I see fit."

At the end of the speech, he pressed another button. Rouge yelped when the gun barrel changed position, forcing her to bob her head up. Her eyes were dancing chaotically, unaware of what the change would bring. Even though the video had no sound, they could easily tell she was sobbing.

Sonic approached Knuckles. The guardian had enough mental strength to withstand any physical blow. What GUN threw at him was a weapon of a different calibre. The hero offered his support while Sonic's face writhed in disgust. Rouge had stolen his Chaos Emerald, the one thing that could have prevented the entire mess, and she taunted him for heroics enough for the hedgehog to lose trust of her completely.

She couldn't fake the danger she was in, however. Neither could the GUN pilot. There was something strange about him. Sonic visited many lands during his runs, but the enemy looked distinctively foreign, and he couldn't tell where exactly he had seen a similar face. The speech pattern wasn't that of other agents, and the way he controlled the ship seemed unusual.

A glance at the man's uniform revealed more start differences. It was much heavier than the normal GUN gear, a greyish armoured suit with joint protectors and rugged folds on the shoulders. Everything looked like it had hermetic seals, boots and gloves included. The protective plates on his torso stood out the most. The part with GUN's insignia appeared to be a second layer, a differently coloured vest the pilot didn't fully clip together as if it was only a temporary addition.

Sonic didn't have a full-on run in with mercenaries before, not on GUN turf. Come to think of it, Sonic wasn't sure the assault ship even belonged to the organisation. The aircraft was designed for a crew of more than ten people. He could only feel three other people, including Jojo 1, on board.

These thoughts made Sonic uneasy. He had considered knocking the missile down, but Rouge could have hatched up an alternative solution. If GUN went all the way to restrain her, she must have been a threat big enough to consider.

Deep in thought, Sonic didn't notice when the man started coughing. There was a gas mask on his control panel, and he kept eyeing it impatiently.

Sonic intended to leave, but a transmission piqued his interest. "Mighty Moth, Eggman's building something under your nose. Chop chop. Are you deaf? I said, chop!"

The pilot muted the signal and addressed Sonic after regaining composure. "I prefer non-lethal methods, but if you keep interfering, hedgehog, I will need to play it by GUN rules."

Blue Blur said nothing. A moment ago he would have called him a hypocrite or a heartless grunt. Now, he started to wonder. The hedgehog's silence seemed to have annoyed Mighty Moth.

"I hope your friends' lives are worth more than whatever Eggman paid you."

Sonic didn't know whether to laugh or growl at the remark, so he just stared at it wide-eyed. "Paid me?"

"You're not affiliated with any organisation, which makes you a freelancer as far as I'm concerned. Freelancers work for the highest bidder, and the equipment you broke today is enough to recoup the boldest investment, or run a small coastal kingdom for a year."

"Wait-wait-wait. Hold on. I'm Sonic the Hedgehog. Don't you know who I am?"

"The hedgehog that put half of GUN's top agents in hospital, thrashed their gear and tipped the scales heavily in Eggman's favour. In short, the enemy. The only reason you're still alive is because Eggman has a real price on his head. You don't. Last time I checked."

"Whatever," Sonic mumbled. The guy was just too stupid to understand. He pulled Knuckles' arm. "Let's go, Knuckles."

The echidna was just as confused as Sonic, which made leaving all the more appealing. He should have gone straight for the rocket. Key or no key, he'd eat the Master Emerald out of the shell if he'd have to.

Mighty Moth grabbed his gas mask and looked at the two reaching out for the opening Knuckles made. "One more thing," he said as he opened another video link. It was Tails. A missile whistled above his head, setting his bangs on fire. "Tell that cub to land. His fuel tank is leaking."

Sonic snarled at that remark. With Tails having a clear connection to his communicator, he didn't have to say a word. For all Sonic cared for, Mighty Moth was as corrupt and as arrogant as other GUN agents he encountered so far. Eggman paying Sonic. The gall of him!

The guardian gave Mighty Moth one last look, just to check if Rouge was okay. What he saw made Knuckles wish he kept listening to Sonic: the pilot hanged the GUN vest on his chair to reveal two marks on the side. Knuckles remembered crippling the agent who gassed him near the shrine. It couldn't have been him…

Back inside, Jojo 1 approached his companion. "You lied to them."

Mighty Moth put on his mask. "Make yourself useful and sit down. Besides, she didn't have clearance to enter the site or rattle up my allergies."

Jojo 1 found a seat by the gunner's cockpit. "How did she get here? Little Moth's the only convoy scheduled for today, and that went to hell."

"Must be the media circus. She's bad news, anyway… Got group A-sshats to reassign my ship as a loader. All face and no substance, like the rest of them." The pilot sighed, taking a big breath behind the mask. It'd take a while for the hedgehog air to exit the bridge.

His companion found more amusement in reading through command logs he had access to. Mighty Moth was a swell guy, but command's decision to put him in top five without the usual sparring sessions made him the most hated call sign on the roster. Since Advance team handled the orders near the launch site, he wasn't surprised to find more dread.

"Let's see… Stingray 1," he hummed upon finding the assault ship on the list. "You're up to tow her back into Station Square."

Mighty Moth didn't know about that. He also didn't know that an operator kept talking throughout the hedgehog encounter despite being muted. The agent opened the doors for an engineer to check on the hull breach and enabled the mic. Advance group A needed no padding to their collective ego. He took another big gulp of air before throwing an irritating accent at the radio.

"A1, I see live hedgehog in your perimeter. Someone's sleeping on the job."

The operator stopped talking. There was a long pause and a coffee spill. "What? You let Sonic get through?!"

"Don't know. Don't care. I'm off to put some eggs in a basket, and drop it."

With that, he muted the comms once again. Eggman had a long record of failing to put mankind to its knees no matter where he decided to strike. GUN had little to do with the end result so far. In a way, this was good for business and arms manufacturing. Had it not been for the villain, many people would have been out of a job. Mighty Moth didn't worry about his own and allowed Eggman to live unchecked far too long. That was the source of the doctor's power, being permitted to do as he pleased while everyone licked their wounds. GUN couldn't leave him in peace for the sake of the world, and their credibility outside the Federation.

"Little Moth's down the canyon again. Are you going to pick him up?"

He had read Little Moth's transcripts. Sacrificing him as a distraction was a painful decision, but the agent did not possess the skills required to be useful aboard the Stingray prototype. Few of GUN's own had training extensive enough to run foreign equipment. The Federation spoiled them with standardised controls and conveniences at the cost of survivability.

"Tomorrow. Your employers should have invested in field medics."

Thankfully, it didn't rid everyone of initiative. That's why Jojo 1 didn't go flying back where he came from.

Meanwhile, Sonic was having a time of his life climbing the rocky peak on Knuckles' back. GUN had mines and other repellents installed in the mountain to make sure no one was audacious enough to try alpinism. Knuckles' geokinesis served a purpose greater than digging for truffles.

Tails found himself grounded without fuel, but he was strictly forbidden to try reaching the peak on his own. Sonic didn't know his exact location, so he could easily imagine the boy being safe, sound and useful. In case of trouble, someone reliable stayed behind to do the math.

"She's definitely inside the mountain."

"Where exactly?" Sonic asked the little genius.

"Umm, all I got were the transmitter's coordinates. The radio tower's control should have a record of outgoing signals."

"I'm still in two quills about this idea."

Knuckles intervened: "You forget she wants the Master Emerald to be whole like I do. If anything I've heard today was true, she'll be begging to help us."

"I hope you're right," Sonic lied. If Rouge really meant them well, the hero may have made a huge mistake that snowballed into an echidna piggyback ride.

They climbed to the tip of the restricted mountain. A majestic sight extended below them to the four corners of the world. The barren dry land had the kind of wild appeal Knuckles couldn't help appreciating. It taught one to be firm in spirit and body while retaining a peace of mind. The solitude the peak helped experience brought him back to the serenity of caring for the Master Emerald as well as himself with no aid from hostile civilisation.

Sonic was also proud of the result. Smoke and debris littered the road leading towards the top while two more paths reminded him of Knuckles and Tails' heroics to reach the target. Such thoughts mellowed down the glee. One of the still burning scrapheaps could have been the boy's plane.

Sure, they talked moments ago, but Sonic would have felt so much calmer if he could see the fox. He reminded the prodigy that he should not, by any circumstances, try to follow them. If anything went wrong, a cool mind would be necessary to guide them to safety. Knuckles had the determination, just not the rationale to pull it off completely.

It felt funny to look at the landscape from above. Normally, he'd dash up a fortress, see it explode and run for the valleys where green comfort grew in spades. Eggman may have related to the scene a lot more, stuck in the middle with enemies approaching from every direction. Sonic realised how painful that would have been: to see every victory the enemy snatched away. Had Eggman offered him an ear, Sonic would have suggested for him to stay ignorant till the last minute.

Life carried on below the mountain top. GUN attacked Eggman's temporary camp. Bits and pieces flew into the air. Both companies exchanged shots while a tiny mustachio speck bounced angrily. With Metal Sonic worn down in every possible way, the doctor couldn't count on getting out of the predicament unscathed. Still, he couldn't feel sympathetic for either side. For all their strengths, they excelled the most on scales of selfish and rotten.

Knuckles had to nudge Sonic to snap out of it. They still had something to do. Knuckles knew he had to. He wasn't so sure about Sonic, and the only way to make sure entailed rescuing the Master Emerald.

From a compound that nearly blew them out of the sky.

Flak cannons rested at the mountain's edges. GUN agents glared at them from beyond an electric fence. They were trigger-happy grunts, the meal of the day Sonic and his friends would blow off into scenery without a twitch. Those people could have been angry or scared, but Knuckles only smelled confusion.

It looked like nobody told them how to react to the surprise visit. The heavy cannons ignored them even though the operators yielded to taking visual pot shots at Sonic. Knuckles' presence didn't have much resonance among them.

Sonic examined the structure beyond the fence. It consisted of a few small buildings. Heavily reinforced white concrete thick enough to withstand an explosion. The most prominent building stood by the gates, a two-storey warehouse. Fuel containers were situated on the other side. Most of the commotion took place further into the launch site by a single-storey blockhouse. It was the closest structure next to the radio tower.

Gawking at the actual rocket next to the attached elevation arm warranted a whistle, something Sonic regretted because of Knuckles' predicament. It was a massive multi-stage rocket with four solid boosters. The head cone looked heavy enough to topple the thing, but Tails explained GUN had made an error in their calculations. Even if the equipment at the top consisted entirely of lead dumbbells, they'd only need two booster rockets to make it.

Knuckles snorted at the fox's assumption. "The Controller will resist anyone wishing to destroy it."

The boy fell silent even when Sonic coaxed him to respond. Making mistakes was no biggie, in Sonic's opinion. What worried him was that GUN intended to push the envelope further than Eggman ever did, and they were making fewer mistakes on their way than the good old doctor.

As they approached the fence, one gun after another cocked up, ready to fire. When Knuckles reached out to check the strength of the material, the large cannons shifted in direction. It wasn't until Sonic's quills started bending backwards from the static that they considered a less direct approach.

Up in the warehouse, a pair of binoculars was fixated on the intrusion waiting to happen. A1 had enough setbacks to pull the trigger on the hedgehog without much thinking. An agent with a golden A3 inscription below the GUN insignia stood by him.

"I can shoot him," A3 said.

A1 zoomed in on the hedgehog. "Shoot yourself in the foot, dipstick. This is my launch, mine. You won't screw it up. They won't screw it up. As long as Mighty Moth keeps his word, the only tail I'll have here will be dead or gone."

His companion walked up closer to the window and checked A1's busy control panel. Some of the dials have been flashing red since A1 decided to block Little Moth's convoy out. The station was cut off from the wider civilisation while the effect dissipated, but security still fed information into the pipeline, ready to transmit worldwide at the first sign of connectivity.

A camera focused on Knuckles trying to dig under the electric fence. A3 pointed his companion to the event on his console.

"Command won't be happy when the comms satellite decides to work again."

A1 glued the goggles back to his face. The agent could have said something he didn't know.

"We can poison him. It'll look like an accident," A3 continued, and encountered more teeth-gritting silence. "Or give him a tour of the reactor. It might be an accident."

Even though A1 never quivered a facial muscle, the agent could tell his boss was angry. Having used a fail-safe protocol, he transferred responsibility on his own shoulders. There were roundabout ways of contacting command, but A1 concluded the department menagerie that roamed in the HQ lacked the speed and flexibility required to keep a hyperactive hedgehog docile. Eggman's interests pounded the equation a few difficulty levels up. Killing Sonic could have had unaccounted consequences. The agent didn't know why the echidna was allowed to live for so long; he presented an official threat, but it didn't matter as long as each variable behaved chaotically enough to cancel the others out.

A3 walked away to inspect his sniper rifle demonstratively. The group leader had other things to worry about, but he knew anything he'd say would be heard. GUN elites were stubborn enough to listen even when their ego desired the contrary.

"He'll cross the line. And you'll be handing the sector back to Eggman."

The defeatist remark made A1's eyebrows twitch. "Let him in."

"Whut?"

A1 put the binoculars down and glared at the agent. "You heard me."

His companion still hesitated. Was A1 serious? GUN officers had a thing for dry humour, but the pause was getting too awkward for a punch line to make up for it. There was no way a group leader could go back on a priority order. Letting Sonic into the base equalled insubordination.

A1 folded his arms, grinning at the speechless reaction. "Dropped your tongue along with your balls, I see. What about lip?" The officer walked up to the exit door and kicked it open. "Escort duty. In person. Chop. Go!"

The soldier rushed out so quickly that the rifle he was brandishing the entire time fell to the floor. A1 whistled down the stairs to get his attention.

"Hey, special case, you dropped your gun, too!"

Alone at last, the leader of Advance team's group A contemplated the multiple warning signals. He tutted the control panel and put in the override password. There was nothing wrong on the base. Nothing to worry about. Command wouldn't miss a thing.


	10. Cheshire Freak

**Chapter 10: Cheshire Freak**

The gates opened unexpectedly. A loud bang shook the quills on Sonic's back: flak cannons announced his entrance. If there was a more obvious trap in the world, it had to be Eggman's handiwork.

Knuckles didn't have to dig under the electric fence anymore because they became GUN's very sudden guests on a secure military site. Both traits turned visible when four soldiers approached them. Three of them had regular gear, guns lowered. Knuckles could tell they were tense.

It looked like the fourth one was of command variety. A heavy helmet, more glitter on the insignia and a sniper rifle on his back. He approached Sonic and bent down to be sure the hedgehog heard him among the noise caused by launch preparations.

He wanted to grab the hedgehog by the pelt, but saw the hairs bolt upright under a startling facial expression. A nasal huff escaped the armoured mask before the agent whispered: "I'll be brief, hedgehog. Those three are on probation. If they decide to blink together and lose sight of you, one of them goes to Holoska. And if you do something funny, two of them die for high treason. Just so you know." There was an audible smile coming from the agent when he paused. "It's a cruel world outside our friendly outpost. Would be a shame if Sonic the Hedgehog took part in the cruelty."

The agent was about to get up when he remembered something. "And if others' lives are worthless to you, I'm dying to test my special bullets on your skull. I've tried them on-"

He would have continued, no doubt, but a swarm of reporters pushed him away. Clearly, Sonic and Knuckles were not the only civilians to join the military for a close-up of the rocket both heroes wished did not exist. Loud camera flashes, calls to smile and generic questions blinded them. Those people made it impossible to proceed or even think.

Sonic tried to ignore the ruckus, random faces jumping, piling over one another to yell louder for his attention. The chilling whisper left a stiff expression on his muzzle. Just when he started hoping GUN had any semblance of humanity left, the military tied the hopes to a rock and dropped it into the deepest ocean crevice.

Once he snapped out of a disgusted shock, he had one thing to tell the crowd. Even though he was used to leeches trying to make some coin from his fame, he had nothing to offer them today.

"Screw this," he grumbled.

There were more important things to do. Unfortunately, GUN hanged another responsibility on his shoulders. Despite the freedom loving attitude, Sonic had a firm commitment with saving lives of the innocents. GUN meatheads hardly qualified, yet he couldn't say no on principle. The hero had a sneaking suspicion that they wanted him to take the easy way, whatever benefit it would have given them.

Sonic stormed off to the blockhouse beneath the radio tower. The three grunts followed him almost as closely as Knuckles did, albeit in a more pedestrian manner. Everyone stopped by the bulky door leading into the subsurface part of the building.

Breaking in probably counted as funny in GUN jargon. Ditching the stooges carried other consequences. Sonic had no qualms about a trip to Holoska. He did, however, realise that different rules applied to regular people with their low stamina and frail everything. Nobody stopped him from abusing the rules, though.

"I want to get inside."

One of them kept starting at him while the other two turned heads in confusion. Was he expecting an answer?

"GUN security staff only."

Ah, so they can talk. That's a start, Sonic thought.

It was a very good start: a female reporter squirmed between them, gave Sonic a belittling look and saw the door rise to a swipe of the ID card dangling from her neck. The hedgehog allowed her to proceed into the cramped space leading to another safe door and a stairwell. When the entrance shut tight again, Sonic looked at the agents quizzically.

"She has clearance."

Knuckles piped in. "How do we get clearance?"

"You put your ID card next to the lock," an agent began, but stepped away from two pairs of very unsatisfied eyes burrowing into his face, "and if you're an accredited reporter, the door lets you in!"

The echidna had his answer, and he would have given it some thought were it not for the accreditation part. Knuckles heard bad things about the word. While he roamed in thought, the three agents muttered something to one another. They knew more than it appeared. A3's orders had nothing against giving the guests a 101. The problem was deciding if a workaround counted as essential info.

Done with the chatter that made Sonic's ears swell in curiosity, the smallest soldier spoke bashfully. "A1 deals with clearance."

This part interested Sonic. "What's an A1?"

"An A1 is a GUN call sign," explained the short one. He could tell the answer did not satisfy the hedgehog, so he added: "He's the field commander, the boss. Group A of Advance team is in charge of the launch, and he's in charge of the team. That makes him Boss In General. Is that right, guys?"

The other two nodded in agreement.

Sonic rubbed his gloves together, grinning. "It's settled. Where is this A1? I want to talk to him."

"We don't know."

The hedgehog didn't expect that, but he wasn't intending to give up. A mischievous glare in A3's direction gave the wayward soldiers a hint about his scheme. "Fine. I'll tell the jerk over there that all of you blinked."

"Not at the same time."

"Not on purpose!"

"Just not," protested the tiniest agent.

Sonic huffed, still game for a serious solution. "Who do you think he'll believe: you or me?"

One of the grunts opened the plastic facial protector to look at Sonic up close. They weren't joking in the first place, and being mistreated by the one considered a hero through and through didn't make their job any easier.

"Give it a rest, Sonic. I have a wife who's a fan of yours back in Station Square. You don't have to like us; just don't be a jerk like A3. Command assigned a few of us to patrol the city streets before that merc showed up and-" he kept talking till Sonic waved a hand at him dismissively. "I asked you not to be a jerk! I have a gun, see? "

On a regular day, he would have listened to the sob story or even offered genuine consolation. Right now, Sonic had doubts big enough to discard the whining as another attempt to bamboozle him. GUN had stooped sufficiently low to hire fake grunts and a midget to cause further delays. Well, it wouldn't work. They've unwittingly given him information to make real progress.

Someone higher up on the food chain had the power as well as the ego to make things happen. A3 gave him a cold shower at the entrance, and Sonic was ripe to return the favour. The agent stood by the warehouse door, leaning against the wall, the rifle by his side. He was talking amiably with another operative, taller and more slender in figure, but much heavier due to a hunter-like exoskeleton.

Once they spotted his approach, the armoured agent turned to leave. The steps proved strong enough to crack pavement and there was a strange hue surrounding the equipment. It was coming from long blue-tinted shoulder pads. When Sonic passed by, he could have sworn everyone else started speeding up. A pang resonated in his ears, as if he stood next to an active slingshot.

It stopped when the agent looked at him. The two exchanged minute glances and the exo-suited soldier marched onwards. Sonic spotted A4 inscribed on the armour's back. So, there were at least four of those. He turned to memorise the agent for sure, but lost them from sight. Strange. The suit couldn't have been that speedy.

The revelation sweetened the pill he wanted to pass on to A3, but he hoped for a good sting, nonetheless.

Sonic stretched out nonchalantly, putting the agent in a less comfortable position. A3 inspected the grunts meant to watch the pest; they stood spread out to cover the echidna as well. Perhaps, the three were worth as much as Mighty Moth said they were.

A cocky yawn coming from Sonic's mouth put his priorities back on the line.

"A3, huh? Bronze must be a snag."

The agent squeezed his eyes behind the helmet. "What do you want, hedgehog?"

"Take me to A1."

He stepped back against the wall and made a mocking noise. "No."

"Why?"

"Because he's busy."

Sonic wouldn't be taken easily. He motioned with a finger for them to murmur in private. "Knuckles took a run around the place while your stooges were busy staring at me. There's someone that looks like an A1 in that warehouse, drinking coffee." Then, he turned to Knuckles with a playful twinkle in his eye. "Right, Knuckles?"

The guardian flexed his arms on cue, impressing no one. "Oh, right. I am as fast as Sonic. Faster, when I want to be."

Before they knew it, two more foot soldiers scuttled to join the team. Those two positioned themselves close to Knuckles. The plan didn't work entirely as expected.

"I trust you, pincushion. Which is why security will check our high speed cameras. If they see red, all's well. But if they get blue spots, you are under arrest, as are your tour guides. Same rules apply to both of you now."

Another setback made the hero frown. The mission had already become a never-ending picture puzzle with missing pieces. Sonic started obliviously pacing in a circle. Faster, faster. Tails had nothing useful to say, save for a run helping blood circulation.

It raised some dust off the ground. As Sonic continued walking, he saw more of it come into view, just like down in the canyon. It gave him an idea, which he intended to show Knuckles. Their escorts looked nervous.

Not because raising a dust storm would count both as funny and losing sight in A3's lexicon. A thin black-suited blond exited the transmitter's compound and was waving at them. Sonic witnessed Eggman's particularly nasty grins many times, but that guy's smile looked like it would tear his face apart any second. He sipped something from a tall can, making the grin vanish in an almost eerie way, and crushed the container before resuming to flash his Cheshire cat-like teeth.

Sonic's entourage approached the man very hesitantly. The two following Knuckles had no such reservations, though. The suit-clad person didn't seem openly hostile when he met them in the doorframe.

The moment they came within sociable distance, Sonic spotted that the door wanted to go down rapidly like last time. It did so in a literal blink, but the man swung outside unscathed. He walked up to them, his arm out for a friendly shake, tiny pupils drilling into Sonic's own.

"Secure doors. Can chop you up if you're too slow," he said, shaking hands with Knuckles. Sonic couldn't tell who was to respond to the sentiment. "Name's Balasupramamian. _The Station Square Daily._ Editor," he said, adding a lovely smile-removing sigh, "in chief."

Sonic smirked. "You're here for an interview, I'm guessing."

"Right you are, Sonic, palsy!" he exclaimed, still boisterously shaking Knuckles' hand.

The hedgehog felt low about what he was about to do, considering what he had told the reporters earlier, but there were no alternatives. Otherwise, that long-named guy would wobble his friend's knuckles off.

"It's noisy here. What about inside?"

"Ah, Sally, my friend. Always full of fantastic ideas. Absolutely spot on! What do you say, Knuckles? He's begging you to share some juicy secrets already."

The man grabbed both of Knuckles' hands and pressed them together, nodding vigorously. Knuckles was taken aback by this as well as the fact he could see his face reflect from those teeth, a blurry and confused image that made him even more uncomfortable. He smiled back sheepishly, barely scratching the size of the guy's grin with his own, and looked at Sonic pleadingly. The signals coming from that reporter conflicted with the guardian's innards: he spoke nice things, behaved politely, yet there was something about him that made Knuckles want to punch the shark teeth out.

"Knuckles? I meant me, and what-did-you-call-me?"

Excluding the guardian, Sonic seemed to be the only one surprised by the way things were rolling out. The two grunts near Knuckles didn't react to the conversation at all while Sonic's squad gave up ground.

He never stopped grinning, but closed an eye when facing the hedgehog. "Sonny, boy, I've done an interview with you last week. Prison Island, remember?"

"No, I-"

Both pupils sealed shut under a pair of raised wavy eyebrows. "You must be vanished, Sammy. I'll get you a saucy dog." The editor let go of Knuckles to poke his earpiece.

"Vanished?" one of Sonic's guides piped out.

The eyes bounced open and the smile shrank in half. From afar, it looked normal. Up close, Knuckles could see the man bit his lower lip to keep the façade.

"What's talking? Oh, awesome to bits! Catch!" he exclaimed and threw the empty drink can he had deposited in the suit's side pocket. "Find me a bin and we'll waltz on the good side of grammar."

Having caught the trash, the operative scratched the back of his helmet with the other hand. "Where do I find a bin in this place without clearance?"

"Honey, I don't know what you are or how you appeared at our heavenly launch party, but I'm not asking stupid questions. Stupid questions are for losers. Now, get smart and recycle, Babybop. Chop chop." He clapped twice, expecting the agent to leave.

"What did you just call me?"

"Oh my stars, I'm talking to myself again. Sorry!" he exclaimed and immediately put a hand on his mouth. The man turned around for a poke at the earpiece. "Bill, is the dog ready?"

Sonic didn't like where this was going. Reporters had a rudeness gene to them, but this one was plain abusive. "No, seriously," he challenged.

The outburst made him turn around. The newsman took out a napkin to dry his forehead while the face quivered up another huge grin. "Salami, look. We've had a perfect time and the interview was delicious. No biggie; you're reruns now. Even my secretary can't get your name right. But hey, I'm into free spirit and distilled spirit as much as every other hedgehog, so tell me my name and we'll draw a smiley face on the hatchet."

What was his name? Bala…Belly…Bo, gah! It had to be a mind trick. Sonic glanced back at Knuckles, feeling the same destructive intent.

A loud exclamation forced Sonic to forget about violence. The door jumped open for someone to toss a chilidog, which the reporter caught without losing any sauce.

"Ohh, forget the hatchet, Mr Hedgekins. Feast your eyes on this puppy," he said as he offered the hot dog to Sonic.

The hedgehog looked away. His smile only grew from the hero's hesitation.

"Come on. It's good. Made of feisty critter." The man put it on his palm in a way that let everyone see the cookery aligned for maximum appeal. Sonic resisted, so the editor took a bite out of the wiener. "It's not poisoned. See? Catch!"

He threw the hot dog high into the air, attracting the eyes of many. Sonic's pupils followed the pattern like a perfect student would. The sun pronounced every ingredient with its mouth-watering texture while the bun's shadow reminded him of the haste he'd need to save it from getting smudged. Gravity had already started pulling it down. Bits of sauce slithered off the surface mid-flight, crystal clear in their spicy tomato-mince-pepper flavour. Sonic had nothing but chaos to eat since the early hours. If he let the food go to waste, his stomach would have strangled his brain.

Despite the bite marks, disregarding the creepy smiles, he'd have it. Because if he didn't take a jump for it, Knuckles would have caught it in his huge grubby fists. Sonic knew the look in the guardian's eye: that possessive look.

A look that broke into disappointment when Sonic caught the bun with his chompers a metre above the ground. It gave the hedgehog a wonderful view of victory.

Seeing the sadness creep up to Knuckles' face, the reporter approached him again, eyes and teeth wide for compassion to soothe his tones. "Security's got seedless grapes in the monitor room. What do you say?"

Sonic strode to the echidna from behind and patted him on the head, causing a small growl. "He agrees."

"Capital stuff. I'll hook you up for next month, Sonic."

The reporter took Knuckles' hand before pulling out a golden security card for a touch by the lock, which forced the door to rise open.

Sonic's guards didn't enjoy the idea of a reporter treating the military installation like a guest house. "Hey, wait! A3 said no funny stuff!" one of them yelled.

The man didn't react and simply ushered Knuckles into the structure.

"I have a gun!"

He grinned back at the loudmouth GUN agent, but didn't address him. Instead, he pointed at the two guards meant to follow Knuckles around. "You two would make GUN prouder than Commander's knickers if you held the door open for our star."

Amazingly, the two obeyed by putting their hands up on the frame. They held it steady despite an obvious struggle to support the weight.

The newsman smiled warmly at them. "That's right, sunshine." He then turned to the hollering agent and pulled his ID out for everyone to see. "See this, whatsitsname? A gold card, courtesy of A1. This is clearance to your exhaust pipe if I feel like it."

His card flopped down when he reached for the inner pocket of his suit to pull out a small thick-barrelled pistol. The reporter spun it around his finger before concealing the gun again. No one dared to question how a civilian smuggled weaponry into a GUN site.

"I have one, too. It's better than yours."

"But A3 said…"

Due to all the commotion, the reporter was getting behind schedule, so he glanced at the agent standing far behind and yelled: "Hey, Alfie!"

A3 reacted with a thumbs up. Sonic's guards had no objections in response, allowing him to withdraw into the building along with Knuckles' entourage.

The door clanked so loudly it shook Sonic's hopes down even further. He knew Knuckles wouldn't be alone out there thanks to the communicator he secretly passed to the guardian. There was nothing scary about a newspaper interview, but Sonic had a very bad feeling about what he did, so bad he could barely swallow the hot dog that tasted so good.

A1 watched the action unfold with bated breath. The heroes were separated and Eggman bailed on his troops turned scrap. Soon, GUN would be ready to present their victory to the world.


	11. Role Model in Red

**Chapter 11: Role Model in Red**

Knuckles knew his part well enough. Tails' whisper helped the echidna remain cool in a situation both confusing and frightening. Unlike Sonic, he had no experience with interviews, which explained why the reporter took such great interest in him: newspeople thrived on unsettling discoveries and exclusive scoops. The echidna had trouble imagining a scoop outside the realm of ice-cream, courtesy of his stomach, but he had a vivid time feeling like one.

The guy next to him looked like drool eager to melt him into nothingness. Knuckles shuddered, catching the reporter's attention.

"Knux, chummy, you're on a ride to Hugetown. Next time you read newspics, it will be pouring awesome in your face. GUN loves face: Eggbert, Sawnic, smarmy whatshisname…" He gasped all of a sudden. "Oo, I think my heart skipped. Energy drinks! Go figure. "

A slip of the golden card allowed them to proceed beyond another heavy door. It pulled away to reveal a long corridor with multiple locked sections. The installation was much bigger than Knuckles expected. Even with Sonic's speed they'd have taken ages checking every bend of the underground maze to find Rouge.

Hopefully, she's alright.

GUN limited their actions while Rouge had a turret at the back of her head. Otherwise, he would have easily knocked the guy's enormous grin into space and ran crazy with his ID card. Judging by the number of doors it opened so far, he had wide access.

Suspicion clouded Knuckles' face. Although he saw other reporters on the top levels and outside, they were the only ones not wearing a GUN uniform this deep in the complex. It made him think the cheery-faced man was more than he had led the echidna to believe. Being held by the hand the entire time with two soldiers behind him added to the trip's already foul smell.

Another steel slab, another hindrance. Knuckles didn't know the hardness of the metal. Going for the walls offered no advantage as they seemed to be concrete in a rocky burrow. In case of disaster, he'd have a harsh challenge getting to the rocket or anything else that mattered. Tails assured him that he was moving in the right direction, but the boy also wanted to know how things were for Sonic. Knuckles assumed he was doing far better.

They approached a safe lock with a massive turn handle. The reporter used his card again, which caused a light to beam him head-down. A beep in the background ushered the guards to grab the handles in order to unlock the mechanism. Their huffs made it look like a laborious experience. Knuckles wanted to help, but the reporter held his hand firmly while waggling a finger.

"What would the fans say, Knux-man? You're a star, a piping hot role model in red. Touch that door, a desperate fangirl tears it for swag. Butch and Bobo shoot her and I get sad. Do you want to see me sad?"

Knuckles stared at him blankly. The golden card was within reach, as were his teeth that seemed to grow in size every time the reporter grinned at Knuckles.

The man let go of his hand to squeeze his shoulders, all whilst intensely looking at the echidna. "You, my friend, are the greatest hero ever. Were it not for your will power, a door's soul would have poofed away. Thank you, Knuxy, you're a peach."

He felt uncomfortable so close to the reporter. Knuckles' nose tingled from the guy's drugged-like breath.

"Peaches look good, taste good and they don't ask questions. Thirsty?"

A rumble in Knuckles' stomach answered for him. The man stood up as beaming as always to see the door leading into the secure monitor room opened fully.

"That's a yes, yes and yes," he cooed, poking the echidna's abdomen.

In different circumstances, he would have bitten that finger off along with the other indexes. The promise of nourishment and the echidna's indifference to meat soothed the growl to a barely audible noise.

"After you, Knuckelator."

He motioned at the space in front of them. GUN had a semi-circular room with monitors tiling the wall. There were studio cameras set in the middle next to a pair of empty chairs. Obviously, it was where the reporter wanted Knuckles. The echidna, on the other hand, wished to be next to the monitors and a control panel.

Sure, nobody told him what's a control panel supposed to look like because if it was a thing with buttons, everything below the monitors had some, even the two security guards who were operating them. Dials, shiny lights, numbers, diodes. Just thinking about them irritated him. Tails' advice to breathe helped no one.

The reporter must have spotted the frustration, so he patted the echidna's back supportively. Knuckles looked up at him, truly lost.

"Meow, Red. See that chair? You're its boss. Go, get it! I can already see the lines heading home."

Knuckles sat down on the chair in the very centre, thumbs twiddling. It was a regular seat made of wood, so he saw no harm in doing as asked. From his spot, the echidna could spot everyone in the room. The grunts that followed him were trying to close the door while two more GUN agents clicked random keys non-stop.

He didn't respond to anything Tails said, unsure if the communicator would cause suspicion. Having Sonic around would have made things a lot easier. The hedgehog took part in many interviews, which he constantly bragged about. Next time he saw Sonic, they'd talk on even grounds. Cameras, attention, free drinks and a girl more nervous than he was.

The clipboard she held in front of herself quivered a bit. She had been bashfully standing close to the door's hinges the entire time. Knuckles wanted her to feel more at ease, but the editor caught her first.

"Carol? Where's Carol?" he asked, pretending to look far away before turning around with an impenetrable grin ready. "Hee, Carol. Are we all set?"

She barely managed a whisper. It surprised Knuckles because she pushed between GUN agents outside without a hint of worry. Either Knuckles was more important than he ever imagined or…

The reporter interrupted his thoughts with half a smile: "Remember the doc's exclusive I promised? Lovely! Neither do I."

Even though he wouldn't stop grinning, the way his fingers moved revealed a lot of anger inside. It stopped with a jolt to the head when the reporter tapped his earpiece. He glanced at the echidna, throwing a wink.

"Brr-drr. Stay peachy, mate. Must be That Guy."

By the time he exited the room, his fingers still twitching, the guards had only a tight gap to close. They needed to stop and wait for him to return. Knuckles couldn't catch their whispers, but the reporter's loud speech reached him from the corridor, regardless. The conversation he got was interestingly one-sided. Only the reporter knew what the recipient had to say in return.

"Hi, That Guy. How's the missus?"

"You took my access card."

The man's hand jerked for the golden ID while the voice remained cheerful. "How's the other missus?"

"I can't get out!"

"I knew the flowers were too much…"

"Listen here, PR Freak! This is my launch. Mine! Everyone here answers to me!"

"That Guy, look see-"

"It's A1!"

"That Guy..."

"A flipping one!"

There was an almost audible crash in his smile when the tone changed on a heel. "Sheesh, like poking a virgin. Eat a diaper, rocket boy. I've been doing launches since before you learned to baww."

Knuckles' guide had to mute the reply. It started off with a roaring pitch violent enough to cause a headache. The reporter sighed, counted to five and enabled two-way communications. He also heard a noise in the monitor room that piqued his interest.

"That Guy, sweet pea, ooze it down. It was either a ride with Alfie or hoping the merc doesn't hate me today. "

He had to drop the call on someone for the first time in his life. PR assistants never dropped calls, not without promising to get in touch. What he saw sent him into professional purgatory: the grunts tried to restrain Knuckles while a security officer wrestled the echidna for his keyboard. A very loud gasp interrupted them.

"Hands down, keyboard monkey! My star wants to shine."

The operative let go of the keyboard, but remained adamant of his righteousness. "That moron was pushing buttons!" he exclaimed, only raising the listener's inquisitive brow. "T-they're GUN security only!"

He ignored the rest of the speech by turning at the other operative. "Percy, get the camera purring."

Once the stuttering security worker realised who'd be blamed for the incident, the reporter approached Knuckles, pretending to check him for bruises. "A face like spicy red needs nurturing, freedom of expression, a hair stylist. You want a bad hair day on your permanent record?"

"No, Mr Freak, I-"

"Need a positive attitude. Smile," Freak ordered. The agent obeyed, resulting in a fairly awkward image that the editor didn't even look at. "Isn't that better? You can tickle him, Knuckers."

Knuckles wanted to tickle someone foolish enough to call him a moron, and he knew they were ticklish. He picked up the agent that was bent on restraining him moments ago. The face looked a lot less brave now that he realised who called the shots. When Knuckles thought about hitting the operator, though, regret bubbled up in his throat thickly enough for the guardian to simply hand the keyboard over.

The agent fell when he caught the item, hitting his head against the console's sharp corner. Regular humans were so fragile.

Freak didn't seem to enjoy the outcome or the fact the console still attracted the echidna's attention. "Pushing buttons, tremendous plan. Let's push this one together," he said in a whisper.

Before Knuckles knew it, his hand landed on a button with "Danger" written underneath. A mere nudge down created a persistent buzzing noise from behind. It was coming from an emerald green light in the doorway. Knuckles unwittingly enabled a force field.

"Awesome! Again!"

He didn't have the time to react when Freak pressed his hand again. The barrier became thicker, brighter. Knuckles took his glove off the console and stepped back. His guide wouldn't ease up, however. The man approached him with a resolute look on his face and a twinkle in his eye that revealed more than the lustre smile would.

"Time to grill the bacon: you're a peach, Knux. Peaches are super nice, like children. You wanna have children? This interview, do it for them. And for me, because I'm your friend. Ever need some, here's my card, my number and my hourly fee."

As he said it, Freak pulled out a small laminated card. Knuckles didn't have the time to look at the letters, but the GUN logo was clear enough. The man helped him read the name in shiny bold: B. Freak, PR. Didn't he say he worked for a newspaper a little earlier? Knuckles wasn't into reading the news, but what he saw made a very firm impression: that guy wanted to take him for a fool.

"Don't look so glum. I won't eat you when you're this glum. Thirsty?"

Knuckles was thirsty even prior to reaching the peak. Flying on the Egg Hornet, breathing rocket dust and climbing with Sonic on his back only fortified that need. He could smell the distinctive aroma of grapes, the kind he always felt when raking them in by the bunches. A few fruit would always slip between his fingers and get crushed into juice before they had a chance to reach his mouth.

Despite being seedless, the taste mixed just right for a parched echidna. Plus, a timid female was offering him the glass. Rejecting her would have looked bad.

"Peaches are amazing when juiced up. Have some. It's good," Freak coaxed.

He didn't have to say it twice. Knuckles took the juice and gulped it down in a blink. The taste made the corners of his mouth turn upwards before his eyelids swung down along with the rest of his body.

Knuckles plopped on the cold floor, much to the crew's enjoyment.

"Just a bit poisoned, hah! GG, Carol. Whisk him up," Freak ordered, pointing at the chair in the middle. It was high time to begin the interview.

The fiend turned to watch the process of a lifeless echidna being dragged on the floor too late to find gravity fail him. Freak bounced into the ceiling from a powerful blow. The guards caught him on the way down, but it took his legs a while to find reliable support. His smile disappeared completely.

"Whoop!"

Knuckles flashed a grin at him in return before spitting the drink out at Freak. "I faked it."

The guardian pulled the grunts aside with little effort. Freak would pay for his treachery very personally, and it would be so much more than a tickle. While he grinned at the captured man, he noticed the fake smile was back on his face. High time to wash the overgrown teeth away.

"But the pain will be real," he grunted, a heavy swing heading for Freak's face. "Ohh…"

His figure curled up before the spiked glove touched the man's suit. In a fit of lavish rage, Knuckles didn't see how Freak shot him with his pistol, the barrel poked at his side. Had it been a real gun, the guardian would have endured. The projectile had a tiny needle at its end, yet Knuckles was already too deep in a floating void to sense anything.

"Jackpot, Red! Bigwigs called you boring. I call you a star, a falling star that spells promotion while it burns and dies," he said, poking Knuckles' head after every word. He then turned to the woman. "Carol, you're on the second he's back from dreamland. If he's not a spreadsheet in fifteen, you're walking home."

Something shiny caught his attention. It wasn't there before. A small communicator, much better than his own, rolled on the floor when the echidna keeled over.

He picked it up to put the device in his free ear. Freak was taken aback by the uncalibrated HUD that appeared, but he could tell the person on the other end took his curious humming with far more fright. The man grinned and closed his eyes in an attempt to visualise the recipient.

"Tee hee. Hello, little guy. What's your name?" He kept silent for a few seconds, inhaling the uneven breaths of the one who created the device. "Mhhh, you should talk to me. I have your friends, and I can do things to them."

Freak laughed heartily, an orchestrated stab at the listener's sore spot.

"Is that you, Milesy-boy? Remember me and you, playing dolls? Fun, fun! You told me they were your favourites, and I brought them, and we played. You should come pay uncle Freak a visit. Only this time, you will feel the sunshine!"

The loud scream on the other end excited him nearly as much as the silence when Tails broke the voice link. He had the upper hand now. There was no way GUN jarheads would lay a finger on him with negotiations swung deep into their turf.

"Get me That Guy," he ordered the injured operator.

"Who?"

"Your mother's middle pimple. Get me your boss."

The security monitor had reattached the keyboard, but couldn't access his systems due to an override command inputted from above. Freak did not appreciate the blank look on the worker's face, so he pushed him away to tap the request personally.

"Snugglebun, you're dumping stupid into my life. Lick that force field for safekeeping," he insisted till the operator moved back. The man didn't stop grumbling, though. "That's why PR's up to its neck in crap. Willy-waving cows bossing people around, splurting incompetence."

Even though the screen he was trying to access wouldn't respond to his requests as efficiently as low-tier operatives, the person he wanted to talk to had an eye on the PR specialist. The feeling of being stalked made him turn to the next screen. An angry A1 awaited him. Whether the field commander was incensed by the conversation earlier, the treatment of site staff or plain butting into the work of another department didn't worry Freak at all. He still owned the winning deck, in theory.

"That Guy! You're so rude I love you eyebrows-down."

"Go on."

"Such a charmer! If my heart wasn't squeezing from caffeine, I'd hand it out to you with juice spilling all over. Boyo, I come with freebies. Packaged up, ready to go."

"Go on."

"Like honey to my tears. I've got the red brick ready for some hardcore NLP. His bud's just eaten a motion tracker and I've found a foxy spy."

A1 stopped appearing interested in the conversation and faced away from the screen. "You've turned one problem into three."

"Problem? That Guy, we're a team. They are my gift, to you."

The soldier smirked at the last bit, turning back. "Command sent me a list of authorised support personnel. You're not on it."

"Ha-ha. I like your style. I'm with damage control."

A1 directed his attention at a second screen. Then, a large folder. Each time, he finished the cross-check with a shake of the head. "No damage control assigned in my sector. That makes you a stowaway, and my fourth problem. Lucky for you, my solution fits all sizes."

The grin on A1's face grew with every word while Freak's own melted away. No doubt, A1 used the override codes to tweak the situation beyond the specialist's knowledge. If the solution was what soldiers regularly dished out, he was in trouble and in need of a counter-solution.

Anxiety got the best of him, and there would be no turning back. Freak smiled thinly. "I wake him up and-"

"I make you feel like a star, too," A1 replied with a mild laugh in the end. He was well prepared, having eavesdropped on the action in the monitor room.

Freak remained defiant. One ace left. "You won't find the spy without me."

"Go on."

"One condition," he began. The sort of humorous surprise he saw on A1's face changed his mind. The PR specialist folded his arms and turned his back on the screen. "Fine. It'll be the one that got away."

"Talk!"

"I want her plane. Red Riding Hood's done and I fly to Central City. I polish your purrfect record, you give me a lift."

The thoughtful pause he witnessed on the other end of the transmission replenished some of the boisterous audacity. Freak gleamed at the concerned field commander.

"Kiss-kiss?"

While they covertly worked on resolving one issue, a sore blue hedgehog was trying to find a recycling bin outside. Launch preparations have progressed significantly in the last few minutes with reporters being corralled into the broadcast building for safety.

Sonic had to ditch GUN's stooges if he wanted to get anything done that day. The sentiment was more mutual that the hedgehog could expect.


	12. Blind Spots

**Chapter 12: Blind Spots**

The three guides had Sonic running in circles even though they preferred him standing still, not moving, easy to track and blink about. At the same time, Sonic's cooperation in finding a bin for Freak's can was much appreciated. He wanted to get rid of any loose thoughts about the Cheshire-toothed reporter, but helping GUN on a recycling mission meddled with his sense of the absurd.

"When the rocket is off, everything that's not bolted will fly," one of Sonic's guards said.

"And fry if it's not fireproof," added the armed midget.

Sonic frowned. "Which is why they left you three outside…"

He knew things were bad when everyone deserted the surface level and thick smoke started pouring out of the rocket's engines. Only a few soldiers in heavy suits remained on the outskirts of the base to protect it from attack.

A3 was an exception in the regiment. He stood guard by the warehouse's entrance, brandishing his rifle. When the smoke pillars reached the storage building, he slowly strode over to the beleaguered hedgehog for a chat. The steps gave off reluctance, but the arms shifted energetically on approach. Whatever caused the agent to move seemed both exciting and worrying.

The foot soldiers offered him the can with an explanation. A3 grabbed it for a closer look when he invited the party to follow him to shelter. The caffeinated Chaos Cola a reporter tasked them with didn't concern A3 at all in the beginning. Only when he gave the can back did he recollect the circumstances. Freak was drinking it; a hyperactive management nutjob with heart problems was drinking the most concentrated energy drink on the market. Someone must have smuggled it into the base against Command's order prohibiting behaviour-altering substances on the secure facility.

None of the underlying worry reached the peanut gallery. To them, the events were solely positive. Sonic shared the sentiment when not coughing on white smoke, yet remained suspicious of A3's motives even when the warehouse doors slid open before him.

The elite broke the tense silence. "The rocket will fire in twenty minutes for the world's most influential media to cover it with more detail than any of your run-ins with Eggman. I've already gotten offers to be an action figure model. Do woodland creatures get such deals?"

Sonic preferred tight peace to the guy's self-aggrandizement. The agent was no better than Eggman in that respect. Still, Sonic never cared for swag made in his likeness. Maybe that's how Amy's gotten so much memorabilia. The plushies were clearly hand-made, but the rest was above the skill level of her fangirlish squeals. The hedgehog shuddered at the notion. He'd get Tails to check things out later.

"Since when does the almighty GUN talk size with _woodland creatures_? " the hero asked.

It was A3's turn to spare his breath: all a hedgehog could ask for while inspecting the environment. Inside the warehouse, he spotted three strange helicopters. Rather than use normal blades, these armoured vehicles had a circular turbine on each side, similar to Mighty Moth's ship. Walking by them, Sonic saw golden symbols akin to the inscription on A3's shoulder. One, three and four stars. Sonic looked around for a two-starred chopper without luck.

They walked onto a garish platform, their weight causing hand rails to pop up from the edges. It must have been a cargo lift used to move heavier equipment underground. It was just what the doctor ordered in Sonic's case, as weird as the thought sounded in his head.

A3 stood on the edge beyond the rails while holding a large remote. He addressed the soldiers who were still intent on keeping up with the initial order of tracking Sonic non-stop. The agent spoke silently, but loud enough for the hedgehog to hear.

"This will be your last assignment. Get rid of the can and incarcerate the pincushion on level six. Failure equals treason. Treason equals homeless widows, just so we're all on the same page."

When he saw Sonic's interest in the briefing, A3 approached him with a whisper. "Regards from A1."

A push of a button had the platform slowly descend into a vertical shaft. It would take over a minute for the height to go beyond jumpable for a supersonic hedgehog, but his attention was fixated on the three grunts rather than the happy jerk above.

"You heard the man," one of the guards said, much to Sonic's displeasure. Seeing the hedgehog didn't act submissive, he raised the standard-issue assault rifle. "I have a gun!"

A3 let out a nasal laugh, interrupting the pitiful threat. He peered down at the hedgehog. "We've checked security cameras. The Holoska FOB is a nice place for nightly narwhal watching."

Before Sonic could realise his folly of inspecting the base at lightning speed was uncovered by a pedestrian recording device, A3 punched the control box and threw the remains down the shaft. The platform began accelerating.

"Liars die in fires," the agent snorted as he walked away.

The guides aimed their guns at Sonic. Even if they succeeded in restraining him as ordered, they'd still be forced to leave for the most inhospitable location on the planet GUN had to offer. While their plight was understandable, Sonic thought he had a better grasp of the situation. Foot soldiers really were the Egg Pawns of GUN variety.

He sighed. "I blow up motherships with my head and that guy clearly wants you dead."

Rather than express dread or aggression, one of them looked up to check if A3 was really gone. He gave others the "A-ok" sign. "Don't worry about him, Sonic. Elites don't trust contractors much."

"When they're shaking about their rank on the leader board."

"But I still have a gun," added the third one.

Although the guards seemed to be aware of their predicament and Sonic's inexplicable escape, they kept him at gunpoint. The platform had travelled a considerable distance from the surface by then. Unless the lower floors had obscenely high ceilings, they've gone way past the designated exit.

"How much lower is it?" the hedgehog asked.

"No idea. GUN refurbished the top floors when they came. The lower levels were sealed off for security reasons. It's cheaper to bury reactor fuel on the spot."

Sonic perked an eye ridge at the tiny agent's explanation. "You know much for a small fry."

"For a hedgehog, you are of average height."

"Hey!"

As he pointed an accusing finger at the agent, the platform they were standing on broke in half. The metal slabs turned downward to form a widening funnel. Sonic noticed light coming from below, an acidic, vaporous green hue emanating from a bubbly mass. GUN were intent on dumping them like the toxic waste the military had no immediate use for.

Surprise spilled over his muzzle, Sonic stared at the guides wide-eyed while pressing further into the wall as his footing receded. "Hey! Wait just a minute!"

"They're scared. Does it surprise you, Sonic?"

The agents positioned themselves on opposite side of the pit, giving Sonic some privacy in his fright. He saw the caffeinated can tumble into the mass at the bottom. There was no evidence of its existence the moment it reached the bottom. A rifle clanked its way towards the end when Sonic's guides shifted to the very edge.

Sonic looked up, and saw nothing. A3 must have put a lid on top of the shaft. He tested the wall behind himself. A slippery, unclingable slab. The situation skipped the average and bad states by going straight into the awful zone.

"W-what's going on?" the hedgehog panicked.

They responded flatly. "We were decommissioned."

"Like my gun."

The midget pulled out a set of suction cups hidden under the uniform's top layer. "Mission accomplished. Let's skedaddle." He hopped at the wall for a vertical climb. The slab had nothing against vacuum.

His colleague from Station Square fired a grapple at the lid for a quick ascent, leaving Sonic alone with a single soldier. The hedgehog frowned at his only companion. Those stooges were prepared too well for such a setback, but they made no effort on assisting him. GUN were playing him for a fool again. Sonic hated that.

"Aren't you bailing?"

"A true hero should lead the way, Sonic."

For once, Sonic didn't feel like taking the lead as it involved falling into foul-smelling doom. He could have taken a chance, given his resistance to most harmful substances, but if the toxins were anything like the ooze from Little Moth's truck, a false move would have been costly.

Sonic growled. Without proper footing, he couldn't time a safe jump onto the opposite wall. It didn't seem like he had a choice when the platform twisted down to its hinges and the walls pushed forward to squeeze them off the remaining support. Sonic's heart was pounding when he took the final breath for a forced wall jump.

It pounded much stronger than ever before, so much Sonic glanced around to find a chunk of metal fly out of the nearest wall. He didn't manage to blink before another piece of the slab broke away and tumbled into the abyss. Knuckles emerged from the resulting gap, happy to see a familiar face.

"All aboard the Knuckles train!"

The hedgehog looked up and an expression of shock turned into glee. "Knucklehead! Talk about cutting it close!"

His friend frowned at the nickname. "Need my help?" he asked, seeing that Sonic was hanging on his toes for life. The hero just extended his hand for Knuckles to grab. "Thought so."

Sonic was equally glad to be back on safe ground. He flashed a grin at the saviour while recuperating. Knuckles didn't press him for the comment about his head. Sonic found the silence uncomfortable. He could have used some banter, but Knuckles seemed to be burdened by something else. There were red stains on his crescent mark.

Unable to identify them, Sonic approached the echidna to make sure. "You're bleeding?"

His friend put a hand on the white fur in an attempt to brush the blemish away. "I, uh, let's just go."

"What happened?"

Knuckles didn't respond for a few seconds while they climbed out of the thick hole. A long corridor appeared before them. Sonic knew there was no way even the last echidna would have dug so far into rock. The thought concerned him, though: if Knuckles made it to the shaft by foot, wasn't someone going to pursue him?

The echidna looked at his marred hands, trying to answer the previous question. "No idea. We were talking…the smiley guy keeled over and the next thing I knew I was running away…with this," he said confusedly before showing Sonic a golden ID card.

Sonic's grin would have pleased Freak. "Is that what I think it is?" he asked in disbelief. When he had sent Knuckles off, he didn't dare to dream about such success.

Knuckles nodded. They now had access to every door in the underground facility.

"Sweet! All we have to do is save princess Shadow. You've found Rouge, right?"

"Yeah. She's two levels down."

Blue Blur jumped happily. Victory has never smelled better. "C'mon, Knux!"

He didn't expect Knuckles to react immediately by punching the floor. The blow was so strong it nearly knocked Sonic off his feet. When he was about to erupt, the fractured flooring fell apart, bringing them one level down.

Knuckles was prepared for it, but Sonic landed right on his tail.

"We could have used the stairs…" he hissed.

Sonic looked at his unfortunate tail, which wasn't supposed to bend like that, and hoped it'd stop aching soon. Without a functioning tail, he'd have a hard time making sharp turns. He touched it carefully at first and felt the skin underneath the fur for anything unusual. Sonic's hand went upwards to the tip while his facial expression turned more relaxed. Nice and smooth; his tail was free to swish in the wind another day.

Pebbles fell on Sonic's head as he stood up. The sound of rapid steps was coming from the floor above. It weakened eventually, meaning someone was moving away. If guards had spotted them, the heroes needed to hurry.

"Let's do it your way."

The guardian was happy to oblige with a punch to the ground. "Kuh!"

A softer landing followed. Knuckles assured him that the corridor looked the way it was supposed to: a wide hallway with a bend on the far side. Possibly, that's where the staircase was. Two heavy doors protruded slightly in an otherwise even wall above a layer of dust. It gave the space a sense of age and neglect. GUN overexerted themselves for no reason, and there had to be more unused floors below.

The lighting was dimmer than Sonic expected. They used the same bulbs, but they were farther between. Sonic huffed at the sight coupled with an abundance of security cameras. These were fixated in the vacant lighting sockets, but the discrete oval appearance couldn't fool the hedgehog.

It convinced Knuckles, though. He wanted to rush right in to free Rouge, forcing Sonic to pull him back. If GUN were able to spot him during a run, a target as valuable as the bat girl would get equally diligent treatment.

"Hold on. It might be one of those high speed cameras. Is Tails on the line?"

Knuckles rummaged between his dreadlocks without any success. "I can't find the communicator…"

"Not cool, Knucklehead. You looked everywhere, right? Oval plug with holes, a projection stub, sticky on one side?"

The question irritated him. Of course he'd looked everywhere. It's not like Knuckles had a pouch for carriage. Still, avoiding security looked like a good idea. Even though Tails couldn't spot a fire button for Rouge's turret while he was left unchecked in the monitor room, the guardian didn't want to take any chances.

Underneath the camera's black exterior, Sonic found the lens responsible for tracking. It took a ninety-degree turn every ten seconds. All the eyes seemed to move synchronically for every unit to pick up the previous tracker's angle.

"Cameras have blind spots. If we time it right, we'll get inside undetected," Sonic explained.

However, unlike Robotnik, GUN placed their cameras in the middle of the ceiling. The only way to reach the door undetected would involve winding up a squiggle-shaped dash while they moved along with the blind spots.

Sonic stared at the surveillance in the distance, his quills ready to bounce. "Think fast!"

A barely audible click announced that the system went into motion. Tails would need to explain the details to Knuckles when the coast was clear. Now, they had to blitz. A ghastly blur of blue and red swerved past each camera's angle for a victorious swipe into the cell.

Sonic brought his fingers to the locking mechanism, but Knuckles had already punched a hole in the steel and jumped inside. The hedgehog followed his lead with the door's remains rising half-way.

"The ID card, Knucklehead… What were you thinking?"

Rather than smack him for the insult, Knuckles grinned. "Fast. Too fast for you, apparently." He did get inside first. All the credit went to his fists.

Knuckles missed the chance to gloat more because the room was empty, save for a pile of scrap in the middle. Egg Pawn heads, broken pincers and shattered glass littered the floor, but no Rouge.

"This must be the wrong room," the guardian concluded as he faced Sonic.

He could have chided the echidna for misleading him. Sonic chose not to, seeing the worry in Knuckles' eyes. There was also something strange about Eggman's scrap locked away in a room with GUN's insignia. What purpose did it serve the military? He added the query to a long list of things he wished to get out of Rouge, including an apology.

Sonic patted Knuckles' back. "She must be in the other one. Let me check."

Checking involved more concentration on the security system. GUN didn't sound the alarm or send a platoon of troops to cut them off, so Sonic assumed they were still good to go. While he waited inside the room for the nearest camera to turn its nosy self away from the door frame, he saw a bright flash overwhelm the blue of his fur from behind.

A metallic clang rattled his ears as soon as the light dissipated.

"What was that?" Sonic asked, glancing back.

Before him lay a pile of worn down robot parts, twice as big as before. That wasn't right. Sonic approached the junk to find an explanation and started digging. Knuckles joined right in, which considerably sped up the process. Their efforts resulted in a surprising find under the pile, an operational warp plate.

"This is Eggman's tech…"

Sonic tapped the still-warm platform with his foot. Nothing happened, so he went on to stand on it. Whoever put the teleporter in the base must have made it one-directional. GUN must have been aware of it being there, given the amount of disruption a warp normally caused. Then, why did they allow it to turn the cell into a small junkyard…

"Do you think?" Knuckles began.

The hedgehog's attention was elsewhere. He walked up to the GUN logo on the wall and traced his fingers on the surface. Something uneven was behind the huge letters. Intent on finding out, Sonic found the edge of the overlaying colour panel and tore it off.

"No way!" he exclaimed.

Underneath the GUN sign was Eggman's grinning logo with the usual colour scheme. Knuckles stared at the hidden image. Confusion and curiosity took the best of him when the echidna walked up to the other GUN symbols on the walls.

They were all covering Eggman's presence. The ramifications were too much to comprehend, but a sense of urgency helped them set the objective. While the base remained under GUN control, Sonic knew who the enemy was likely to be. If the military allowed an enemy teleporter to function under their noses despite all sorts of fancy security, the chaos had already spiralled out of control.

"Let's get to Rouge ASAP," Sonic said before dashing out as originally intended.

Knuckles wanted to follow him, but the blue streak bounced back to the start of the hallway the very moment it pressed forward. The repulse was powerful enough to make a dent in the wall Sonic crashed into.

"I think we've found the right room," the hero huffed out, recovering from a pang in his ears.


	13. Luck it Up

**Chapter 13: Luck it Up**

Sonic shook the pebbles stuck between his quills before facing the assailant. He didn't see it coming before and there was nothing to fight now. The hedgehog stared at the empty corridor. He wasn't hallucinating, no. GUN put something midway to stop him.

Curiosity mixed with a thirst for action couldn't dissuade him from planning the steps carefully. He proceeded towards the goal while security cameras changed direction, but the blur had to retreat in a blue flash, unable to move further than the first time.

The flash didn't belong to Sonic, though. He felt solid impact and a counter. It couldn't have been a force field as they had an elastic feel when pressing against at high speed. Whatever hindered his progress had an uneven shape and caused his reaction time to slow down.

He would have considered Metal, but the sensation was different. The robotic copy wouldn't have allowed him two breathers after a failed dash.

"Third time lucky," Sonic hummed as he wrapped into a tight ball.

Previous attempts were nothing compared to the speed he gathered for the winning streak. Sonic grinned at the inevitable as he shifted to break the sound barrier. Like a bullet, the blue speedster sliced through the air, setting the dust on fire as he ripped the tiniest particles off the floor. The miniature fireworks smokelessly combusted in the air, a testament to the hedgehog's lightning speed.

He broke through the barrier without breaking a sweat. Nothing stood a chance against the speed demon.

Sonic cheered when he looked back, imagining the faces of stunned losers that dared to challenge him. Like before, he saw nothing.

It cost the hero dearly: consumed by the need to accelerate beyond sanity, he forgot the corridor wasn't an aircraft runway. He crackled into the thick wall on the opposite end deeper than the first time. Whatever, or whoever wanted to keep Rouge locked up had an evil sense of humour that Sonic did not approve.

The bits on his fur didn't bother him as much as the powdered cement that filled his mouth. Sonic coughed the fine mix he ground up himself and sat down, looking at the empty space angrily. There had to be a way to approach the door without being turned into a living wrecking ball.

Knuckles may have discovered the solution. While Sonic busied himself with what the echidna considered senseless running back and forth, the guardian found the task a cakewalk. Before he could flash a grin at Sonic, however, he decided to go for the door and strike while the iron was hot.

He didn't expect to feel the burn of his own spikes chucking him back to his entry point. The crash in the wall was softer than Sonic's because the hedgehog had already made a decent dent.

From Sonic's perspective, it looked like a gust of air threw the echidna away amongst a parade of red lights. There was more than one flash, and they had a sense of direction.

The heroes decided to align their paths once two undefeatable gazes met in the middle. The pair nodded silently. Sonic motioned a count to three with his fingers, discretely pressed to his side.

Knuckles roared as quickly as he could while avoiding security. He was careful not to collide with Sonic, who seemed to slow down a lot compared to the previous dashes. The strategy paid off because Knuckles whizzed past the door to meet the other wall that was softened up by Sonic.

The hedgehog took a leap above the spot that let Knuckles pass. His crude calculations proved correct: something hit him hard enough to disorientate the hedgehog. The buzzing in his ears and the suspicion that Knuckles moved a lot faster than he should have were a source of alarm.

He snapped out of it lying next to Knuckles. The echidna needed no reason to charge at the enemy, be it GUN, Eggman or a cloud of fairy dust, but Sonic warned him about letting the rush get the best of him.

They'd need to stick together, to a certain point. Neither wanted to pass the challenge without a fat chunk between his teeth as a trophy. Sonic grinned at the guardian when they nodded in wordless agreement. If their obstacle had ears, those would fail.

Both of them zoomed off, following the cameras' alignment. Knuckles ran behind Sonic with one fist primed for a hook to the side. The idea was to stay close, so at least one of them got the chance to land a hit, but Sonic gained a generous lead on him too early.

Knuckles growled at the cocky display and picked up the pace as well, if only for a split second. Before he knew it, Sonic's ball-shaped form bounced from an invisible barrier for a hard homecoming. It was Knuckles' time to shine!

Rather than pick a different course, he bounced for the same spot Sonic did, which was still highlighted by an azure hue. Knuckles aimed a blind punch upwards. To his relief, it stopped, but not dead in its tracks. The spikes pressed into something sturdy, hidden under a cloak.

A figure temporarily fizzled into existence before bumping the echidna to dig a hole with his face. It disappeared as rapidly as he flew, allowing Sonic to take note of the contours.

It was humanoid in appearance with long shoulder pads resembling a samurai's protector plates. A bit higher than a regular human, and much blockier. Sonic didn't doubt a robot stood between him and saving Rouge.

Sonic guessed it was Eggman's handiwork teleported via the warp plate, judging by how it hung attached to the ceiling to avoid the cameras. If the doctor had a fancy robot to sacrifice, the hero wouldn't disappoint. Now, he knew what it was. The thought inspired confidence.

However, the hedgehog still had a problem on his hands: the robot seemed to use an opponent's force in its defence. Even if he knew where to look, Sonic needed help from someone wielding a different source of power.

Even though the previous attack landed Knuckles on the opposite side of the corridor, he had no difficulty understanding Sonic's plan. Rather than continue as pedestrian, the two grazed into the walls to gain enough momentum for gravity to cease being a deciding factor.

Plaster crumbled from the ceiling upon being shredded by Sonic's quills while Knuckles supported himself with the spikes on his hands, somersaulting above hazards. They'd strike from different directions; no stupid machine would prepare a countermeasure for both of them simultaneously.

The stealth ability stopped being a major perk when a few small steps revealed the strength of magnetism required to keep the robot upside-down. Sonic crushed invisible bots before, so he had no qualms turning another see-through foe into scrap.

Things got serious when the two took a precise swipe at where the enemy was supposed to stand. Initially, Sonic felt himself slow down, but the distortion did not help the robot avoid a hit in the side. Metal resisted his momentum before bending back.

Up close and personal, Sonic caught a proper glimpse of the stealth bot. He saw GUN's logo on the frame and a human operator clad in black. It was the agent he nearly bumped into outside, A4!

Sonic didn't know how to react to the revelation. He couldn't cut through a human.

Thankfully, Knuckles had a much easier time deducting the next step. He always got such a kick by connecting his fist to whatever appeared in the way. That time, the kick was literal: the enemy dodged the blow in a bright blue explosion and sent him flying along with Sonic into the farthest corner.

The red that flooded Knuckles' eyes wasn't just a matter of rage. That thing twisted the rules of engagement by coupling their powers against them.

A4 wasn't done. She decloaked to load a mammoth blaster with bullets and aimed the gun at the heroes bunched together.

The trigger clicked with a dull pop accompanying it at the muzzle. A single projectile sliced through the space till it reached Sonic's confused face. The bullet was aimed high enough not to touch the hedgehog, but still close for him to feel the burn, and its speed.

He looked behind into the narrow hole it dug in the wall. Although Sonic's keen eye couldn't tell how deep the burrow was exactly, he knew it wasn't a regular bullet. Both the speed and its heat trail surpassed the standard armaments Sonic would run circles around for giggles.

Then, it dawned upon him. A4's robotic exo-suit wasn't just repulsing the crippling hits. It was feeding on the heroes' power while they were near. Sonic really despised the slowdown effect he had felt on approach.

He needed another strategy, fast.

Knuckles decided his way of dealing with the enemy required no alterations, though. The echidna rushed out the moment he could stand up to return the humiliation with interest. Now that the agent stood visible, the job became a lot simpler.

First, he'd crush the gun and then go for the robotic parts.

"Knuckles, no!" Sonic yelled.

The plead fell on deaf ears as Knuckles felt the thrill of gaining the upper hand as soon as he grabbed the gun barrel firmly. He aimed a punch front and centre, marvelling at how unmoved the operator remained.

Knuckles put a squeeze on the weapon, well aware that his gloves were sturdy enough to dig through solid rock and the Master Emerald's power made the material truly impenetrable. In the back of his head, he was hoping for resistance. It would have furthered the delight.

What occurred when she pulled the trigger rendered him speechless. He still had a good grip of the material, but a hole marred the pristine white of his glove on both sides. The bullet went right through the hand that struck down Mecha Sonic, and the red droplets coming on each side were proof of how wrong he was.

In denial, he thought it was trickery. Nothing stood a chance against the Controller's continuous blessing, not even Knuckles or Sonic together. He downed battleships by rebounding their projectiles the same way.

Knuckles wanted to punish the agent for trying to trick him, but he had to let go when a wave of hurt crashed onto the shores of his brain.

"Urgh!" he exclaimed as the hand tensed unnaturally. For the first time, he felt a piercing pain in his palm.

The agent's shoulder plates glowed a bright red when she aimed the gun at Knuckles' head. With two intruders on the menu, A4 had no time to waste.

Neither did Sonic. The danger his friend was facing electrified the hedgehog's quills, forcing his heart to squeeze rapidly while the feet prepared for an emergency save. Knuckles was too bold to retreat and the agent couldn't be trusted to miss the deciding shot.

Sonic blasted off, determined to end it there and then. A4 might have been a lightning fast shot, but it would still pale in comparison with the speed of supersonic lightning that powered Sonic's tenacity.

The boom of the shattered sound barrier resonated wildly in the hallway, popping the lights to temporarily turn the agent's hunter exo-suit into a blue beacon. One of them would hit the target head on.

A4 pulled the trigger, anticipating the intervention. The bullet flew to its target at a velocity rivalling Sonic's. Unlike the hedgehog, however, it was at arm's length from Knuckles to start with.

He was right: the echidna didn't try to dodge the hit. A4 dropped Knuckles as soon as it formed a gaping hole in the floor and prepared for Sonic's rage. She just sent a projectile through his friend's scalp, so the protective layer of her suit powered up to eleven.

The speed demon struck like a bomb, knocking the augmented agent down from the ceiling. Sonic hissed angrily as he pummelled the robotic joints and plates into fine scrap, much to the agent's surprise. The suit was supposed to protect her from his velocity, but it malfunctioned.

No matter. She aimed the blaster at the enemy in hope of putting both of them down in one fell swoop.

Sonic didn't allow that by shredding the gun as well as the agent's thick glove. He rendered the foe powerless, making her stuck inside the metal cocoon made to enhance her strengths. But it wasn't enough. He couldn't risk turning his back on such a despicable villain.

Eyes brimming with reluctance, he reached out for A4.

When Sonic was about to commit something he would never forgive himself, a pair of hands grabbed him from behind. The hedgehog jolted out of the grip and turned around with a grimace ready to undo anyone foolish enough to separate a hero from his sorrows.

He faced the worried look of a companion he refused to involve further in the mission. Tails shined a flashlight at a crippled Sonic, who didn't know how to react to the sudden visit.

"Tails, I-" Sonic began before being pulled into a tight hug.

The hero needed that. He squeezed his friend in return, hoping time would stop. Deep in his heart, Sonic knew he'd have to acknowledge what occurred to his friend and that he was too slow to prevent it.

Tails wanted to speak, but a loud groan from Knuckles' direction put priorities elsewhere. He directed the light at the red echidna. One of his gloves was in poor condition and the guardian used the other hand to rub a sore spot on his head.

Knuckles managed to stand up, revealing to them that he was still alive, if not outright kicking.

"It'll take weeks to fix the do," he grumbled.

The bullet bore through the top of his head, scorching the foundation of multiple dreadlocks. Had the agent aimed any lower, the scarred sense of style would have been the least of his worries. Right now, Knuckles had a pressing matter on his agenda.

A4 fought valiantly to break out of the mangled hunter suit till Knuckles rolled the human face-down. A faint glow emanated from the machine's spinal cord. The echidna growled at the sight and punched the covering armour plate off.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you…" the immobilised agent warned.

Underneath, he found a small shard of the Master Emerald. Anger boiled in him, but Knuckles couldn't experience release in the Controller's presence. He grabbed the piece with his injured hand, contrary to the request, and prayed.

What the jewel was forced to do under GUN's corrupt command would be amended. Light burst from his arm, covering the glove in a brilliant display that illuminated every corner of the long corridor. Once it died down, the emerald piece back in his possession, Knuckles approached his friends with both fists firm and ready for battle.

Their eyes poked Tails for answers.

"I thought you needed my help, so I threw an EMP grenade. Must have popped the lights… Sorry!"

A quake shook the rest of Tails' explanation into the ground. Tremors lasted a mere second before a faint buzz announced reserve systems trying to return electricity to the floor. Rather than allow silence to swallow the idle tension, a bang disturbed their ears. It came from Rouge's cell.

"Rouge! The turret!"

Knuckles grabbed the ID card and put it next to the lock, his brain pulsing from a stressful inflow. Ruined dreadlocks would be the least of his troubles.


	14. A2

**Chapter 14: A2**

Knuckles rushed inside as soon as the door slid open. His heart was pounding as he saw smoke coming out of the turret gun's barrel. The military used explosive rounds against a rogue agent, the only one he believed was able to fix everything.

"Kya!"

Realisation hit him hard. He didn't dare look out when a sudden weight crashed his head into the floor. Knuckles found himself eating concrete again, and he felt the hurt through a brick-proof skull. The little scorch marks in his quills were nothing compared to the drilling dive he took.

The sudden exclamation rang in his eardrums for a while.

Sonic followed the guardian into the cell. Unlike Knuckles, he was alert enough to dodge a sharp kick that would have easily turned him into another wall tattoo. Tails shined his bright torchlight on the culprit, an agitated bat whose consciousness ripened as painfully as Knuckles' lumps.

"Rouge! What's wrong with you?" Sonic barked, pointing at the grounded echidna.

Her face puffed up with irritation floating above embarrassment. "What's the big idea just walking in? I thought you were sent to put me down!"

The hedgehog snorted. "Exactly what you did to Knucklehead."

Rouge didn't need any cues. She kneeled down in front of the battered echidna in an attempt to pull him out of the freshly dug hole. It took a strong feminine touch to bring his brusque cluelessness above the ground. Knuckles looked worn out, having suffered a beating more intense than she normally engaged him with when fighting over the Master Emerald.

Her choice of resolution didn't change one bit. She hugged the guardian the moment he resumed breathing, unwittingly siphoning the fresh air out of his lungs.

"Knuckles, are you alright? I'm so-so sorry I-" she cooed before catching a dissatisfying glimpse of his muzzle. "Spit it out."

The echidna turned away to poof a cloud of smoke and debris out of his throat. Rocks weren't too bad; it's the cheap cement mix they used for flooring that made his innards churn. While coughing his way into full consciousness, he realised the bat's embrace loosened up enough to let him breathe. At the same time, it never disappeared.

She saw this. Rouge didn't reveal how much the curve of her lips delighted in making him fluster at the first sight of intimacy. His loss helped the bat regain composure too quickly for her own amusement.

"I missed you, Knuckles. I can always count on you to save a lady in distress."

Sonic interrupted the hug by putting his hand on Knuckles' shoulder. "You sure put a number on him while _in distress._"

It prompted the bat to stand up, a hand extended theatrically for everyone to see her razor-sharp nails. For a GUN operative working in friendly territory, she came with pick accessories a thief would reserve for a heist of her lifetime.

She gleamed victoriously at the hedgehog. He was fast on his feet, but Rouge could run circles around him when it came to eloquence. "That was before they let me loose in the dark. Which one of you do I thank for the atmosphere?"

The torchlight fell to the floor at the question. It rolled for a bit, lighting up a distressed fox boy's shoes.

Rouge swaggered over to him unhindered. The bleak surroundings made it difficult to see outside the contrasting shine below their knees.

"Thank you," she whispered into his fluffy ear.

Tails wanted to giggle, scream and hide at the same time. His tongue wrapped up in five knots and lodged itself somewhere between the throat and his stomach while the rest exhibited flu symptoms. What frightened him the most was that she didn't move away after saying thanks. The little genius would have gladly done that for her, had his feet not cemented into the ground. In all honesty, he wished he knew whether he wanted to be far-far away right now…

His blue friend interrupted the extensive pleasantries by picking up the light. Rouge's pupils shrunk in an instant. The bat was consistently moving towards the cell's exit during her segues, and Sonic didn't want to see her go, disregarding Tails' feelings on the matter.

Sonic wished the stand-off hadn't occurred. Interrogating someone he frequently considered an ally left a foul taste in his mouth. Knuckles had a less negative view on the situation, but he didn't know how much dislike Sonic and Rouge gathered for each other since the early hours.

The fox broke their intensifying stares with a stutter: "S-Sonic… You better check this out."

Tails removed his communicator and enabled loudspeaker mode after putting it on the floor. A heated conversation was taking place elsewhere on the launch site. The transmission was limited to sound, but the actors were easy enough to deduce.

"You've crossed the line," A1's gruff voice came out of the speaker.

Unpleasant whining followed along with a less audible, yet sudden physical sound. Everyone stared at the device wide-eyed before a long thud nearly shattered the transmission. Even though the source seemed to be almost directly above them, Tails' invention consistently picked up muon interference from lower levels.

Coughing rose on the line while a voice much closer to the mic creaked.

"That Guy, we made a deal!"

Rouge gasped when she recognised the annoying tone. "No…" She looked at Sonic, who was waiting for an explanation the entire time. Even in those circumstances, the agent felt reluctant to share her knowledge.

"Aye, a deal. I've found her plane. Did you bring my ID card?"

It sounded like the two operatives were having a prolonged fight somewhere on the military installation.

She lowered her eyelashes at the noise. Rouge had little chance of success without Blue Blur on her side. "You must have met them by now, Sonic. Freak was involved in the Prison Island explosion. They've sent him as a liquidator for the media storm."

"What media storm?" Sonic asked.

"Exactly. If Command parachuted him on-site, there is already something they want to erase from public view. The whole ordeal may go horribly wrong…"

Sonic flicked his nose mockingly. "Kidnapping Shadow is a good start for anything to go horribly wrong."

"You think this is a joke?"

The hedgehog glared at her. In his book, the bat has exhausted her snark credit. "No, Rouge, do _you_ think this is a joke?"

She slapped him faster than he could dodge or regret. "For Chaos' sakes! Do I get off from having turrets stuck to my head? I wanted to save him from ending up in the rocket in the first place."

Rouge's words burned as much as the fiery thwack to his cheek, but it wasn't enough for Sonic to slow down. If anything, the bat rattled up his quills further. Sonic may have been unable to throw a proper argument at Amy. The jewel thief, in contrast, let him feel he had the moral ground not to turn the other cheek.

"Save him by robbing me while I was unconscious."

The remark made her fingers wiggle, eager for another go. Rouge didn't have to listen to his sass. She did, however, want to keep an ear out for anything A1 was up to. Tails' device shook her fertile planning bottom-up by introducing a third voice to the remote conflict.

"Hoo-hoo-hee. Gentlemen, there is no reason to fight. With my help, all your problems will cease to exist."

"Eggman!"

"It can't be," Rouge whispered. She knew loyalty wasn't a common find high in mercenary ranks, but nobody had the suicidal intent to walk hand-in-hand with the maniacal doctor. From the sound of things, it wasn't the first time Eggman spoke with them.

"You've had the time to consider my generous proposition. What do you say?" Eggman asked.

A moment of silence broke out on both levels before Freak made his answer: "Eggzilla, palsy, how can I say no to my favourite brainiac? The smarmy hedgehog, my gift to you."

Rouge fell to her knees, jaw gaping. GUN's top soldiers succumbed to a madman's influence. To make matters worse, Freak was in on it and she had no way to reach Command or stop the evil from happening. Siding with the doctor put everyone's lives in jeopardy. They have all become…the enemy.

"No. Damn it! Not him," she whispered sourly. When Sonic averted his gaze to give the bat some privacy, she checked her cleavage, searching for something. A look of dread fell to surprise and irritation as she rummaged around. In the end, she growled. "My codes! That little bitch swiped my override codes!"

The bat shot up into the air. "We must get to the top ASAP. Those guys can fire the rocket without warning using my overrides. Quick, give me the holo-key."

Sonic tensed up at the message. So did the others.

"About that…we agreed you'd have a spare, being a spy and all," the hedgehog said, looking at his toes.

Had Rouge not been aware of the state of their affairs, her indignant surprise may have hurt somebody. Of course, Sonic would not have gone to rescue her first if he had the choice. His predictability allowed her to land with a feigned frown nobody could see through.

"I should have known you're only chivalrous to hedgehogs. There is no spare. GUN tried to replicate it, but there wasn't enough time to make a fully functional copy."

Tails piped in, ever-so-hopeful amongst his worries. "Does that mean there is a partially functional one?"

The spy might as well have been waiting for such verbal analysis. "It's in the main launch hall, above security."

Sonic nudged Tails playfully and gave everyone in the team a reassuring look. "What are we waiting for?"

His twin-tailed buddy grabbed the gloved hand before Sonic could blast off. They had the speed, determination and an access card to win. Rouge was free, so only one stop separated them from the goal; no time for holdups.

Tails solved the impatience issue by opening a small bag of earplugs. Unlike GUN, the fox always had a proper spare just in case. "Take these, guys. I don't want us to separate again."

While his friends got acquainted with their communicators, Tails reached down to the floor for his own. It was the most advanced version yet and those didn't grow on trees.

"Touching," a feminine voice emerged from the dark background.

Before they knew it, the turret's barrel aimed at Tails. A bright muzzle flash scattered the team. The turret fired an explosive round into the floor, destroying a good chunk of concrete as well as the best earpiece. Tails' EMP had disabled the turret only temporarily.

The flashlight rolled chaotically on the floor among bits of debris while the gun prepared to fire again. It was fond of blowing up Tails first, shooting round after round into the ceiling while the boy performed acrobatics his Tornado planes would have been jealous of.

A stray projectile blew a gap in the wall that separated Rouge's cell from the scrap hold. Lacking support, concrete blocks splintered into both rooms while the shockwave made it impossible for Tails to coordinate himself.

The gun had no difficulty spotting the prodigy in the dark and dusty execution cell. Tails was already hurt from being paddled around the room by explosions, so another shot would have finished the job.

Whoever was operating the turret, be it an AI or a human, did not expect Sonic to homing-attack the gun barrel. The hedgehog raised the turret's nose to the very top when it fired.

Rocks fell from the damaged ceiling, but it was not enough to dissuade the weapon. Its cogs remained attached enough for it to spin back towards the target.

Although Sonic wished it stayed dead the first time, he didn't mind sharing with Knuckles. The echidna had always wanted a punching bag with real kick, so he struck the barrel at the centre when it faced to fire. Fractures inside the hollow set off the explosive prematurely, permanently disabling the threat.

The beheaded turret spun in place while black smoke erupted from the top. It was a bitter reminder the team to keep their guard up at all times. Freeing Rouge meant nothing if they didn't make it out alive.

Sonic looked at the bat, well aware that she would notice even in the smoke. Knuckles and Tails were ready to leave, but Rouge felt another presence she couldn't ignore. The rest had a more important assignment on their hands.

"You guys go. I have some unfinished business."

"Stay safe," Knuckles said as he darted off with the others.

Sticking together may have been a better idea, in theory, and Tails would sometimes ask himself why they left her behind. Rouge wasn't about theory, though. Neither were the other heroes. In practice, certain scores were to be settled up close and personal. That was how Bat Girl loved it.

Content with privacy, the stalker entered the cell. "Agent Rouge."

The bat turned around, facing the source. "A4."

Faint emergency lights were destroyed during the mad turret's shooting spree, rendering the environment pitch black. Both of them grinned at the inevitable. A4 had the luxury of an air filter and assist sensors while all Rouge could rely on were her fragile organs.

"When challenged by a counter-intelligence officer in the field, engage at will," A4 acknowledged.

They could not see each other, a limitation the rivals considered their respective advantage. The two circled in the heavily damaged cell, taking measured breaths in preparation.

Rouge closed her eyes to give her ears the chance to shine in their full glory. "The outcome is added to the agent's quarterly assessment." Assisted by her voice, they had no difficulty drawing a clear image of the surroundings.

"My boost towards A2."

A4 charged at the bat, a move that earned less scorn than the intent behind it.

"I'll give your ass a boost," Rouge hissed.

The bat flapped her wings to repel the offensive on even height. It increased the amount of space open for attack, something A4 was counting on. Rather than strike the agent front and centre, A4 went for the wings.

It didn't make a difference to Rouge, who stopped an imminent punch with her hand. Not even a new-fangled suit could protect a human from the discomfort of having one's wrist bent backwards. If anything, a thief of Rouge's calibre knew all about the way a hand functioned.

She didn't cry out. A4 threw a proper punch in the midsection. Rouge intercepted both and it wouldn't take long till the tension in A4's knuckles forced the soldier's legs to give in. Fidgeting out of the bat's iron grip was a hopeless ordeal. GUN ground troops trained separately from the organisation's furtive spies, and a close-up of the rival's strength brought thoughts of vitriol she didn't want the bat to witness.

Instead, A4 slid underneath, surprising Rouge into releasing her. The bat immediately flapped her wings to distance her back from the enemy, but she wasn't quick enough to dodge an upward kick in the rear.

Rouge grimaced as she rubbed the sore spot. Although A4 didn't have the momentum or angle good enough to cause real discomfort, the idea that she couldn't afford underestimating the enemy left a sour taste in her mouth.

"How's that for a boost?" A4 teased.

A great gust of smoke and debris came as her answer when Rouge readied her wings for a dash. That time, Rouge forced A4 into a defensive stance by needling a flurry of frontal stabs with her formidable pick nails.

The soldier had to avoid the hits by taking small strides. Rouge was fast, too fast for comfort, but the number of attempts reduced their effectiveness. It allowed the soldier to grab the bat's retracting hand to throw her into the floor.

Rouge's wings stopped the fall from happening. She glided above the ground with strength and speed enough to gain an immediate edge in altitude while A4 continued pursuit. Once Rouge spun back to resume the offensive, she greeted the opponent's headgear with her heel.

The hard knock left A4 unfazed as she squeezed the leg to twist the bat face-down. A4 would paint the floor with Rouge's makeup.

At least, that was the plan. The tumble barely disoriented Rouge, so she pressed her wings together for a spin beyond A4's expectations. It quickly turned into a tornado drill that needed the slightest nudge from the flaps to bring the confused foe back to caution.

She sent the woman crackling into the wall with a footprint on the suit as a bonus.

Rouge landed content with herself. Even an idiot would have noticed the toothy smirk flashed in a cocksure display.

A4 coughed. The protective layers worked, but even that would eventually give in to Rouge's exceptional strength. She needed a different tactic to unhinge the bat while discretely loading up a blaster. "Bravo! You went all the way for a snivelling hedgehog. A1 knew you two were a thing. Can't wait to see the Commander's face."

Her audacious mouth incensed Bat Girl. A4 received an uppercut that sent her knocking into the ceiling instead of a chance to recuperate. The descent was interrupted by a swift kick into the destroyed wall.

A loud crash announced that the soldier fell in a pile of scrap in the other room, a fitting spot for a gossiping wench.

Rouge slowly walked up to the trash while A4 attempted to stand up. The bat spoke calmly: "That hedgehog is worth more than everyone else on this base put together."

It didn't faze the rival. A4 laughed while clearing her path from the junk. "You've gotten soft, Bat Girl. Clouds your judgement."

Egg Pawn heads came alongside the riposte. Their discus shape made the parts fit for throwing.

The bat dodged the first few before she identified the projectile with her ears. "A virgin like you should know."

Velocity of the throws increased, but Rouge could bust the whizzing heads away with her knuckles. The last one bounced back to the sender. An irritated noise called for a direct hit. Rouge towered over her opponent in every respect. A4 deserved a good beating for her thoughts and deeds, but she wasn't good enough to spend more time with. Rouge would make sure they removed the woman from the prime roster.

"This is pointless. What did you do with my codes?"

A4 stood up as she finally escaped from the scrap. "Ask the PR freak. He fished them out after I KO'ed you the first time, and now A1 is running the place like a king. Command sent you here to die, anyway."

Rouge quivered. Even though the mention of Freak approaching while she was unconscious was high on her list of vendettas, it was the last sentence that truly worried the bat. "What you say?"

"Surprised? You thought GUN would allow you to rescue him from the rocket with a real enemy spy on the loose? Get real! The fancy convoy switcheroo got us nowhere and that's as far as you're going."

One more pawn head spun towards the bat. She caught it, eager to return the favour, but it wouldn't detach from her hand; the part was covered in glue. While Rouge struggled to remove it, A4 pulled out her glue blaster for a few shots at the bat's wings.

The adhesive foamed up in volume, making it difficult to move. A4 used the window of opportunity to knock the bat down and secure her on the ground. The tables have turned, and now the enemy stood tall above her.

"Looks like you won't be screwing bio-weapons no more."

A4 lifted her boot to stomp the colour off Rouge's face. She deserved it.


	15. Bonbons

**Chapter 15: Bonbons**

A4 put her foot down for the bat to swallow. Insolence at its finest thrust to level the meticulous care Rouge treated her face with.

Unable to stand up while her wings remained glued to the floor, she put up the Egg Pawn's head as a temporary shield. A4 grunted at the metal obstruction she had coincidentally given the rival. She stomped on the discus shape repeatedly till it broke into pieces.

Rouge could imagine the excitement on A4's face, an expression she didn't want to mirror prematurely.

The boot swung down carelessly, allowing Rouge to shift her head to dodge the hit. Since her hands were free now, she grabbed the soldier's leg to pull out the combat knife secured by the boot. Rouge then used her legs to kick A4 away. It gave her a window of opportunity to separate the foam-covered wings from the floor and stand up.

She hissed at the soldier the moment she got back on her feet. Both were armed now, a detail A4 wanted to amend.

"My, stealing from a GUN agent in the field. How low can you go?" the woman mocked.

Rouge had no second thoughts about returning the trophy; she threw the knife at the rival, who deflected the attack by shooting it with a glue pellet. The blade got stuck to the ceiling, and it would have taken some effort to scrape it off thanks to the quickly hardening adhesive.

"That still counts as theft, Bat Girl."

Before she knew it, the blaster was kicked out of her hand and A4 found herself skidding across the floor. Rouge didn't want to spare the rival for a second, so she took flight to move ahead to roundhouse A4 for a puppet-like roll in the opposite direction. In the end, A4 landed back in the pile of scrap.

"How's your counter now?"

A4 coughed. Being flung around the room like a rag doll disoriented even more than it humbled. "Close to launch," she said as she groggily tried to stand up. Her suit's support systems were at their limit. After that, any scheme would be fruitless because she'd turn blind.

Rouge bobbed her head before picking up the discarded gun. "Good point. Keep the change."

She pulled the trigger. A4 would look so much better with a fat gob of glue on her face. Sadly, the blaster wouldn't respond. Rouge attempted to fire again, to no avail.

"Hmph. Out of ammo." The bat feigned disappointment as she threw the blaster away, slowly walking up to A4. "Since I can't trust you to lay dormant like a good girl, you have two choices: I knock you out and say this never happened or you spend the next few months in hospital, but get credit for fighting moi."

The soldier chucked a broken Egg Pawn's arm at her in response. Rouge snickered inwardly at the symbolism, yet the beating A4 signed up for would be straightforward in every sense. She blasted off to the target, unaware that each side had a different understanding of treasure.

A4 grabbed a heap of robotic parts and tossed them into the air, adding more and more to the barrage. It was never meant to hit Rouge directly. Instead, the scrap made awful noise as it fell: crackling, clinking and clanging on the floor.

Teeth gritting, Rouge tried to reach the enemy, but the volume rose above the bat's threshold. She cried out, holding on to her ears. There was too much chaotic noise. It meshed into a sea of sound waves that made the bat feel as if she was floating for real. As it echoed in the cold room, the noise only became worse, forcing the bat to stop dead in her tracks. Her eyes were wide open despite seeing nothing in complete and unnatural darkness.

She growled. "Making it harder for yourself, bitch."

Rouge no longer knew where A4 was thanks to the ringing in her sensitive ears, but a strong blow in the back made her gasp in realization. The hit whisked the air out of her lungs and the bat found herself unable to recuperate because a hand banded around her throat. A4 jerked the bat off the ground, trying to suffocate her.

"Breathtaking, isn't it?" A4 mocked as her grip tightened. The bat's stifled rasp was music to her ears. "How many people would die to see you like this? How many did you rob and cheat? Royalty, collectors…and even your friends!"

A4 violently shook the captive to make struggling more difficult. Even in that state, Rouge was nigh impossible to fully restrain, so A4 knocked the butt of the recovered blaster into the bat's head and pressed her to the floor. A4 repeatedly struck Rouge in an attempt to keep her down.

It was a moment of fleeting superiority. Rouge swept the support from underneath A4's feet with a side strafing kick. She wanted to do more, end things quickly. Dizziness and bruises coupled with a sore throat that treated itself to little more than polluted air for a good part of the day forced her to reconsider. Her ears had to ease up for the world to regain tangibility.

Her foe's groaning sped up recovery. The room still swam in shapeless noise, yet nothing stood in her way to exacting retribution on A4. Rouge took off for a ramming stride. Both glided into the pile of scrap, the impact chucking bits everywhere and slicing the hump in two.

All she needed now was the feeling of her attacks puncturing through the multiple layers of protective armour to reach A4's soft skin. Every time her pick nails touched against uncovered tissue, a refreshing gust of consciousness encouraged her to lash out again. Rouge fell deaf in the chaos, ignorant to whatever her lips spat out in response to intensifying whimpers. Just a seasoned spy and her objective.

Despite the beating, A4 managed to slip away. The quivers Rouge experienced at the last hit exposed how far up the wall she had driven the enemy. A4 escaped not because it was a tactic; she ran for life like a coward. It brought a smile to Rouge's face.

The soldier she wanted to maul to the finish also had a reason to cheer. Unlike the bat, A4 wasn't drifting in her own confusion. Rouge's hospital predictions might as well have been true. Till blood loss became a deciding factor, however, A4 knocked her malfunctioning helmet a few times to enable thermal readings. Drips of warmth littered the floor between the combatants. Rouge, a concentrated clump of lethal heat, shone brightly in the background.

A4 wanted to change that quickly, considering that the blob of heat started rising from the ground. She aimed the blaster at the floor for a swift shot. The glue pellet covered the sole of Rouge's boot, halting the process.

"My gun doesn't answer to a pickpocket," she declared. The now depleted magazine cocked out, allowing A4 to replenish it with a single ornate bullet, the only one left. She hesitated before putting it into the magazine. "A3 gave this shot to me for a special occasion." She bitterly squeezed the grip. "Up yours."

The ground rumbled when Rouge realised she was trapped. Her boot wouldn't budge and she didn't need a cue to feel the chill of being at decisive gunpoint.

In matters of great importance, a spy is willing to make an equal sacrifice. Rouge committed to her own by giving the beloved footwear a slip and a daring roll behind a mountain of scrap. The rest would be a matter of silent hope, a concept counter-intelligence operatives placed one step above failure.

The soldier saw a scared, trudging heat signature before the temperature sensor fizzled out permanently. She wanted to shoot then and there, but it was her only chance at settling the score. A4 took her helmet off, ignoring the fact Rouge had broken her nose.

Rather than a dark void, she was greeted by light, a light that blinded her almost as much as it discomforted the bat. Curious or reckless, Rouge peeped out of hiding, her pupils reduced to dots because of the brightness. A weak smirk rested below her distorted vision. It was the way A4 would remember her. It was when she looked down before pressing the trigger.

A4 was standing on an active warp pod. The intense light announced a large load pending to appear. The woman's pupils didn't have the time to react when more scrap piled in, teleporting over her.

The resulting shockwave flung Rouge into a wall. It brought back the fluid daze she suffered from earlier even though the light ceased and there was little noise. Tremors continued for a minute longer.

When everything settled down, she looked up at the ceiling and sighed.

"That's the easy part done…"

Rouge grabbed a sharp-looking piece of metal as she floated to her abandoned shoe. The glue hardened over, which allowed her to recover the decorum in full. But a few persistent smudges grated her fashion sense. Her gloves required more urgent attention, given the flexibility she'd need to get out alive. Shame that agents didn't carry wardrobes in the field.

A renewed earthquake caught her attention. Something was up on the site's lower levels. She needed to investigate, and the best way to accomplish that was paying a visit to the ones responsible. Another batch of scrap teleported in while the spy pondered, forcing her to make haste. Rouge followed the wreckage in search for the straightest path to A1.

"What did I miss?" she spoke into the communicator.

A fox greeted her. "They're evacuating."

Sonic had encountered little resistance on his way to the monitor room. He had insisted on heading straight for the key, but Tails advised a more thought-out approach. They saw an agent trying to close the heavy door and decided to check the cameras for utility. Knuckles grabbed the grunt just in case.

"Someone's in a hurry. Talk!" the guardian barked.

"The central console is booby-trapped. Let me go!"

Knuckles pressed him against the wall, a fist primed for pain. "Make it safe, then."

The agent squirmed before realising the echidna was too strong. "Can't. It was there when I came."

"Liar!"

A punch in the midsection made the grunt want to roll up and moan, yet Knuckles kept him pinned. The agent gasped for air, dizzy from the pain.

"I'm a pilot, not a fighter. I don't have a gun, either. If you don't let go, a bunch of civilians will die."

Sonic patted Knuckles' back reassuringly. "You can put him down. GUN wanted to off him in an acid pit along with me when we separated."

GUN didn't manage to properly seal the door, so they entered the security room while Knuckles tracked the unarmed agent limp away. Perhaps, he was too hard on the human. The military had too much going on in its ranks for the guardian's tendency to simplify everything in terms of good and bad. Complexity brought chaos into his cosy system of values.

As soon as they got inside, Tails strode to a secondary workstation to see what he had access to. The place was a mess: broken equipment littered the floor next to sheets of used copy paper someone covered red stains with. One of the control panels was wrecked, leaving an operational assistant's module and an administrator's dashboard, rigged with explosives.

Knuckles didn't know where to avert his eyes to avoid a sense of guilt. The room was tidy the last time he's been there and he couldn't shake the feeling that its current state was partially his fault. He avoided more quizzical comforting from Sonic thanks to Tails' speedy typing.

"Sonic, look," the little genius uttered.

They still had access to security cameras. Nearly all hallways were empty or had personnel heading out. He didn't have a full picture ready because some cameras were destroyed or deactivated, but a bunch of soldiers armed to the teeth congregated near the entrance to a single room, the main launch hall.

It was the biggest space they encountered on the site so far. Rows of launch monitoring equipment took up most real estate. The launch assistants were busily tapping away commands while two clipboard-waving operatives gestured aggressively at A3, who had his hands on a big red button placed on a pedestal. Behind it all stood an enormous screen visualising the rocket from multiple angles as well as a countdown clock, frozen.

"Fun party. Looks like A3 is in charge," Sonic declared, tapping his chin. He then tinkered with his earpiece. "Hey, Rouge, can you describe the key?"

"Big, red, round, with a plug."

"Is she talking about me?" Knuckles asked.

Tails hadn't configured the communicators properly, so the transmissions were public. He proceeded to amend the mistake while Sonic face-palmed at the comment as well as Rouge's giggle. At least, they've found what they were looking for, inconveniently placed under the jerkiest agent's nose. He would have prodded his little friend to find out what the launch personnel were arguing about, had Tails not been huffing at the limitations of running a secondary input console. Even a savvy user like Tails had problems crunching past a login's privileges.

Sonic waved at the guardian, ready for action. "Let's go, Knux. We'll hit them simultaneously."

The fox saw them off with a strained look. "I'll stay here. Will be your eyes in the sky."

He received a thumbs-up from Sonic, who hurried away as soon as Tails dropped silent. Sonic wished he had more to tell the fox boy, but it was for the best. The last thing he wanted was to endanger someone as sensitive as Tails.

On a different occasion, Tails would have given him a hard time for splitting up. That day, the prodigy's curiosity mattered as much as his thirst for adventure. They left him next to a bomb ticking underneath a blue screen. It wasn't a system crash, no. The system administrator had enabled debug mode, which the fox was innately familiar with.

The last line interested him greatly. "Transmission packet ready. Send?"

"What's in this packet…" he murmured, eyeing above for compression data. "Whoah!"

He managed to access a small part of the packaged command logs on the secondary terminal. It revealed a stark image of how bad things were on the GUN side of the stand-off. Lower levels suffered structural damage. There were warning signals coming from multiple sections that security either ignored or didn't get a chance to see for reasons unknown. Surveillance cameras had started blinking out long before Sonic reached the mountain. They were accessible to operators, something Tails made sure of during Knuckles' first visit to the monitor room. Now, the problem seemed wide-spread and progressing still. To top it all off, the mountain was bleeding radiation left and right.

Tails hoped the pit Sonic spoke of really had acid in it as opposed to…unstable reactor fuel. The fox gulped.

A worried eye fixated on the bomb at the main workstation. It was an unassuming box with the GUN logo and diodes flashing at the top. The build quality was poor, in Tails' view, suggesting that it may have been built by an amateur rather than an arms factory. If someone wanted to make the deterrent obvious, they succeeded. Touching an unstable-looking explosive was foolish on its own.

However, Tails believed in the vastness of genius in his search for truth. He had to know what was really going on. While pressing a button on the console the box had wires attached to would surely set off the explosive, examining the device for a way to dismantle it wasn't as dangerous.

Tails wished he had taken a proper screwdriver with him. Some of the screws used to put the outer shell together were loose enough to be removed by hand, but the fox had to rummage on the floor for a metal shard pointy enough to work on the tighter bolts.

Relief escaped his lips when the frontal part of the casing became unhinged. It wasn't attached to the bomb, so Tails could easily discard it. If the rest was assembled with equal simplicity in mind, turning the device off would be peach easy.

The outlook took a turn for disappointment. The inner workings of the device were a set or reds and yellows surrounding an electronic EGGMAN BOMBOM timer.

"This is one of Eggman's bombs!"

It took a few deep breaths for him to calm down. Tails had no idea why a large Eggman explosive lay ticking inside a GUN facility. At the time, he didn't even care because the timer was down to a minute. Fingers trembling, he pressed the metal shard between the countdown panel and the frame to pop it open. He'd seen such bombs before, only never with as much destructive mix.

Once the luminous pane flipped open, he noticed the countdown speeding up. Inside the bomb, he discovered more dread: the wiring looked nothing like a standard Eggman setup. Knots, twirls and yarn ball-like tangles drew an image of life-threatening chaos. The security room had blast doors and a capable force field to protect it from intrusion. Whoever set up the altered bomb wanted to make sure the room ceased to exist as a whole.

"Be careful there, Tails," Rouge's voice reached him.

Tails set their channel to encrypted mode. "There's a bomb in the security room! I don't even know where to begin!"

"You can quit and run while you're ahead."

Instinctively, Tails grabbed his nose, expecting it to bleed fountains from the sheer amount of pressure, and demotivation. "No way!"

"So carry on."

Audacity coupled with nonchalance added an uncomfortable heat to his forehead. As a scientist, he appreciated the honesty, but his feelings cried for an apology. Tails figured he had a greater chance at getting one from the bomb.


	16. Power Play

**Chapter 16: Power Play**

Rouge continued, stifling Tails' stressful huffs: "Deconstruct the process before you touch it. Start by underestimating the jarhead who messed with the wires."

Such advice sounded like a recipe for disaster. Underestimating a bomb made by Eggman and obfuscated by GUN. Ha-ha. The wires were an impossible, knotted mess. Black cords twisted around with red, curved in the opposite direction and wiggled about further like a clot of yarn. How did they do it and still have the bomb working? The idea behind the process stunned and intrigued Tails until he riddled Rouge's advice again.

The process must have been difficult because rewiring a bomb without altering the wires' insertion chambers meant…

Tails hit his head against the wall at the thought: the wires, while twisted together, still plugged into the same sockets. Even the colours were the same at the entry point.

Eggman's mass-produced bombs weren't difficult to deal with if one knew the wires' colour codes. The battery had basic protection against powering down the whole explosive, so he had to work at the current's receiving end. He slit the primer's input and took out the blast cap. Time still dripped away at a quickened pace, meaning that it was a double detonator. Only by disconnecting the timer's outgoing charge did he enjoy the sound of the bomb's heart squeezing to a halt.

He had no chance to relax. With the hindrance out of the way, Tails could finally access the admin console. To start with, he reviewed a list of archives ready to send. It was mostly boring data about the environment, something every launch control centre transmitted to be sure the weather was accounted for to the fullest. What interested him was a set of radiation data.

The reactor had been in manageable shape six months ago. Eggman may have abandoned his Bullet Station HQ in a hurry during Sonic's previous visit, but he didn't leave any rods melting; he allowed the facility to slowly fall into dormancy. Its reactivation, on the contrary, could be described as a damaging jolt. Someone or something turned everything back on in a matter of seconds. Had Tails not known any better, he would have sworn it was Sonic's doing.

After that, the underground power station had a lapse of autonomous operation. GUN let it do its thing without ever checking the state of affairs under their noses. He snorted at the idea of it being done on purpose: discovering problems with their electricity supply would have demanded risky expeditions and a lot of funding. What's the point of repairs when explosions are the military's forte?

Considering that the reactor managed to power the launch site despite being all but an active threat, their utilitarian decision proved effective. The actual strain, as well as radiation levels above one millisievert per hour, did not register beyond two days ago. Tails wondered what significance the timing had in the fluctuation.

Before moving on, he wanted to decipher the launch day's results. His first thought after seeing the information was to jump ship and get his thyroid gland checked. The fear turned into a silent gulp as he read on. If the first increase may have been attributed to more energy being consumed in preparation for the launch, no good intentions were behind a fifty-fold jump. His only consolation was not knowing how GUN gathered the data. They may have placed a sensor next to the reactor, making everything relatively less hazardous on the surface.

Still, the metric would have been irrelevant, had they not put their gadgets up close to the actual rocket.

Tails sighed, reluctantly glancing further up the logs ready for transmission. The situation warranted action more than knowledge, yet he could not allow risking everyone's lives, as opposed to his own.

Further investigation proved his power consumption theory correct. GUN activated a lot of support equipment two days prior. It consisted of a powerful ventilation system and autonomous radar arrays. He had seen boxes that looked like cellular network transmitters on the face of the mountain. He would not have assumed these ate up much power even if GUN charged all of their batteries simultaneously. The reactor overexerted itself as if it experienced interference. Likewise, other tech was less responsive on the launch site.

His own equipment, made to work perfectly and transmit high definition visuals over great distances, was reduced to generic walkie-talkies. Short range radio worked well, to a certain degree. GUN didn't go overboard with radar scanning to predict airborne attacks. They put up the transmitters as improvised jammers to disrupt something inside the mountain. The result, in engineering terms, turned out a disaster, but GUN were willing to sacrifice the outpost's integrity to reach their goals.

The fox wanted to find out what the military feared so much. In order to continue, the system required him to quit the debug menu by transmitting the data. He didn't trust a program that compelled him to commit to a specific action. Whoever had installed the bomb gave those attempting to do it a fair warning.

He looked up the recipient's identity, just in case. A Central City-based address followed by a typical government agency alphanumeric string inspired confidence. They would care about such statistics and file perfunctory reports to justify their existence. In retrospect, he had no reservations of sharing the information he dug through and extracted all the use out of.

"Send."

Tails sighed while the files slowly processed. Either the facility's logs consisted of very cumbersome extensions or no one had established communication for a long time. A barely-moving progress bar brought the fox boy's spirits down along with the tips of his ears.

Bored, he started twiddling his thumbs. Tails sat down on a comfy chair to zoom from monitor to monitor in hope of finding out more. On the return to the admin's station, he found the file progress lower than before.

"This doesn't make sense…"

He looked above, wondering what could have caused the transition. Tails gasped at the cause: the dull weather stats were but the first batch of logs GUN intended to send. The upload carried on at the speed of light, transmitting heaps of unknown data. Troop placements, communication logs, ammunition, rocket cargo… Tails set all of it free to reach what might as well have been the military's HQ.

The fox attempted to stop the process, somehow. He used all the known button combinations for cessation, only getting the system to respond when the last file slipped between his fingertips. Whatever he had let loose unlocked full access to the administrator's workstation.

With luck, he'd still make good use of it. First, he tapped into the lighting system of a vacant corridor. Tails located the controls to switch the lights off remotely. If he was to help Sonic penetrate the heaviest guarded room in the facility, he'd need to come prepared.

A single click brought outstanding results: the screen flashed red while bold letters announced that his attempt failed and was recorded for security purposes. Before he knew it, all control nodes blanked out. The military locked him out.

"No!"

GUN taunted him, yet it was not enough to undo his resolve. Tails scurried to find a way to disable the warning and salvage what was left of his access to the facility. His efforts were acknowledged when the image blanked out to be replaced by a live transmission. A hawkish grey-haired man clad in a military uniform was glaring at him.

Tails recognised the man, the Commander himself. The fox boy's shock brought a half-grin and a nod from the other side. Once the admin screen returned, he was greeted by a detailed list of active sensors: heat, movement, the works. Although he could not alter anything, they allowed him to watch. It was a humiliating putdown.

Extra worry came from Rouge's direction. "They're up to something," she whispered into her communicator.

"Obviously..." muttered the prodigy.

"They've gotten quiet in A1's room. Is everything okay on your end?"

Tails glanced at the screen. Sonic had positioned himself out of the cameras' reach and Knuckles was closing in on the control room. The fox opened his mouth to speak when commotion lit up the facility's sensors. Soldiers rushed towards Sonic from behind while those guarding the key plate brought a beam weapon at the wall Knuckles would dig through. A3 shot the cameras that provided Tails a view inside the launch hall, making it impossible to see their next steps.

"Was okay till you asked!" he exclaimed, quickly switching to Sonic's channel. "It's an ambush! Look out behind you!"

Earth rumbled under Tails' feet when he saw a blue streak on the final push to the security door. GUN had laid mines in the empty corridor, which Sonic set off during his run. They would have exploded klicks away from the speeding hedgehog, had soldiers not held him down with bullets. Rockets impacted with the ceiling, bringing chunks down in his path.

As the soldiers near the door stopped firing, Sonic saw that his legs no longer moved as intended. The mines laced with super glue reduced his run to a crawl. More of them exploded from collateral damage, turning Sonic into a hardened statue, a look of horror frozen on his muzzle. His face remained unmarred, but it didn't matter: the agents had him surrounded.

From Rouge's view, things seemed as dismal as they were for the rest of them. She heard vivid laughter coming from A1's command post.

"Success! Launch operator, disengage the loading tower. Freak, get me Eggman on the line, chop-chop."

It took some time until Eggman responded to their call. Freak addressed him with almost genuine humility: "Your Egregiousness, feast your eyes on a free blue hedgehog, moving at a steady zero klicks per hour! Pretty, isn't he?"

Eggman was presented a live feed from the scene, a blue figure under a thick layer of yellow and grey. Dozens of soldiers flocked around Sonic, their guns ready to blast him into oblivion. Rouge felt the delight melt over Eggman's brain as the command post fell silent again. The villain took his time to speak. It was obvious the news excited him, but he didn't want to show it. GUN offered him an arch nemesis on a silver platter, a move that would indebt the doctor if his glee got out of hand.

"I'm coming over," he said flatly.

The comms link must have been terminated immediately. Rouge couldn't see inside the room, stuck behind the keyhole-less door leading to it. Her ears allowed her to pick up the slightest noise, however. While the enemy remained ignorant of her location, she had the upper hand.

Freak rubbed his hands in contentment. "That Guy, you should smile some. I made him swallow the motion tracker in the first place."

"You also sold us out to Eggman twice in one day."

"The most profitable sale in forever and back!"

A1 ignored the remark. He had no interest in knowing Freak's understanding of what he did or promised Eggman. The PR assistant had no executive power over the launch, so his trade-ins with the maniac were null. Had the doctor known that, he would have attacked before they were ready. Now, A1 had an ace up his sleeve, a living, breathing supersonic hedgehog that the villain was fond of capturing in one piece.

Of course, the impromptu ambush should not have been a necessity in the first place, had some agents obeyed orders to a tee. A1 walked up to his communication platform to scowl at the loose end.

"Mighty Moth, I've just talked to someone you supposedly eliminated."

The agent stroked his beard thoughtfully. "I said I had eliminated the problem and retrieved the alloys."

"Have you ever failed an assignment?"

More caring beard strokes followed. "Yes."

"Big surprise. If Eggman gets close to my rocket, I will demonstrate you the GUN definition of eliminating someone."

The transmission ended with a grating noise. A1 got the last word, always a reason to cheer. He was far from done, though. The field commander had a small metal case, which he was eyeing from time to time. Freak understood he had no business touching it, fearing he could be responsible for blowing up the mountain.

When he saw A1 approach the case with a sneaky look, the PR operative knew something was up. Freak glanced from afar at the primitive controls and monochrome display. It appeared to be a short-range transmitter of sorts. The keys A1 pressed made Freak's hair bolt upright: a soldier was tampering with the nuclear reactor beneath the mountain. Freak didn't know much about reactors, but "eject control rods" and "disable SCRAM" felt like something that required the twenty warning prompts A1 cut through without any afterthought.

Freak approached him, trying to sound upbeat. "That Guy, what are you-"

"Quiet! Five minutes is plenty."

A1 pushed the interloper away even though he could still see the commands running on the basic screen. The chief had more pressing matters than a PR dolt's fear for safety. It was apparent Eggman would sacrifice the facility to achieve his goals, and the maniac would not be permitted to do so. A2 did a good job planting rudimentary controls in an environment that disabled drones. Pity it didn't work out in the end.

The thoughts were interrupted by a flashing diode on the command post's console. The launch control centre was hailing him to obtain the firing code for the rocket. A1 didn't need authorisation from Command to complete the mission while he had the overrides. He punched in the default key combination and glanced in satisfaction at the launch operator.

"Make it fly."

His gratification lasted until the operator shook his head disapprovingly. "That's an invalid firing code, sir."

"What?"

"The code you transmitted is invalid," he repeated, nervously gripping his clipboard.

A1 was ready to burst, but the operator had his head turned to another screen. "Oh, wait. It's good. Five minutes and counting."

"Make it less."

"We need the time to calibrate the engines," the operator declined. Disobedience incensed A1, so the worker decided to add: "Command issued the fire order. Unable to alter, sir."

The colour of A1's face went from bright red to pale white in a blink, a sign the operator took as permission to terminate the video link. Had the ground not begun shaking without stop, A1 would have frozen in thought. If Command somehow re-established communications with the Bullet Station outpost, why didn't they notify him first?

His question had to wait as the tremors would not cease. Freak fell on his side and had difficulty standing up. The PR assistant felt anxious about the mountain turning fatally unstable, but he didn't voice the concerns with respect to A1's silent panic.

"That Guy, what's shaking your boots?"

A1 turned around, eyes darting to the sides before focussing on the companion. He chose to ignore the sting hidden inside the question by concentrating on his task. One last safety check of the warehouse before departure. A1 didn't pay much attention to the exact cameras he scrolled through, yet the lack of helicopters in their view range unnerved him slightly, at first.

"You can wait here and see. I'm taking my bird…" There was a pause. A1 quickly paced through all the available cameras. None of them revealed the location of his helicopter. "The birds! Where are they?"

The field commander jumped to the entrance door GUN wrecked to bring Freak to him. Machines could have been fooled by glitches, delayed footage or a spy sticking bogus photos in front of the lenses. He had to see it in person.

Unsurprisingly, the warehouse was empty. Someone had taken them. The whole ordeal smelled of soot, sweat and peaches, a strange sensation A1 wished to extinguish with great accuracy. When he heard the familiar noise of double rotor blades, he frantically ran back up to stick his face against the window.

Flashes, gleeful exclamations and a tiny GUN pilot greeted him in one of the choppers. Now, his accuracy achieved a target ripe for extinguishing. He pointed an accusing finger at Freak, who just smiled in return.

It prompted A1 to pick him up by the collar with one hand. Hatred mixed with inevitable release contorted his face into a tight mask Freak's ad campaigns would have envied. "Reporters! It was you! Say hi to dentures, Freak!"

The victim tried to escape the pain via the one method he knew: "Saving the reporters is tops, but I'm not behind it, I swear! I swear-eee!"

Screams deafened the heartbeat that rang in Rouge's ears since A1 had stormed down to the supply area. She had a split second to hang on to her life, squeezed in a dark corner just under the ceiling. The field commander investigated the premises thoroughly and grumbled at the scent she had inadvertently forgotten about. Hardcore spying had its moments of unintended excitement.

Escape was her only option. While A1 was busy mauling an ignorant culprit, the bat swooped down for the nearest exit. She frantically urged Tails to respond. His misery about the outcome had grown exponentially. The fox boy's rasping revealed that he was running.

"Tails? Talk to me, Tails. What are you planning?"

"Gotta save…this is my fault. I gotta!"

Without a doubt, he was heading straight for the launch control centre's level, where Sonic was captured. Rouge could not afford such a disastrous outcome. "You've got to think! If they catch you, GUN will win."

"Isn't that what you really want?"

The little pipsqueak chose a bad time to get smart with Rouge. "If you are dead, it won't matter, will it? I need you to be with me on this one, Tails. No matter what happens, as soon as you can, leave the mountain. There's a secret hangar in the southern canyon. Meet me there."

She didn't wait for him to respond, as the logical speech seemed to have annoyed his emotional side even more. Rethinking her words, Rouge added: "You can vent your frustrations when it's over."

Tails muted the bat like the rest of his friends. It's better this way, he thought.

Such thinking left a pang in his chest. Tails stopped in his tracks, knees quivering like the ground they fell on. His idols lost. Rouge abandoned them yet again. Tails was all alone…in a military base ready to swallow everyone's lives in one fell swoop.


	17. Venting Frustrations

**Chapter 17: Venting Frustrations**

His forehead was pumping with stress. So far, everything Tails tried to accomplish only made the situation worse. The idea that the next step would lead to losing his best friend made the fox shudder.

A platoon of soldiers armed to the teeth waited for him. GUN wouldn't let Tails approach Sonic, captured as a trade-in for Eggman. Since the mountain rumbled non-stop like a volcano, he realised that time crawled forth while he wasted it on useless thoughts, ever closer to defeat.

Maybe, if he surrendered to GUN, they'd let Sonic go? He'd figure out a way to free Knuckles, too. It would be a good result, all things considered. Shadow…no one knew for sure the military would fire him into the sun. And even then, the Ultimate Life Form might survive, probably.

"Stupid, stupid! Think!"

Tails grabbed his ears for planning to randomly sacrifice someone for the sake of convenience. The pulling pain would teach him a lesson not to do that again. Other than that, however, his mind was a blank. GUN had a better setup across the board and seemed to have forged an alliance with Eggman. Rouge bailed. He had no chance to win. Back to square one.

Even the hopeless ear strain didn't get more blood to power his brain. Bat Girl was right: Tails' irritation sealed his mind away from finding a solution everyone would have been proud of. He recalled her exact words, scolding as they were.

"Vent my frustrations, pah."

He looked down, frowning. Tails didn't like being lectured, or lecturing himself in the aftermath, but he was out of solutions. The fox stood up decidedly and tinkered with his communicator to re-enable Rouge's channel. She had experience with backdrop plans and her emotional state wasn't getting in the way, probably.

The action only made him feel more miserable as Tails' hope was either out of reach or she had disabled the earpiece. On a better day, he would have been worried about Rouge. Now, Tails felt abandoned, left idle while the world moved on without him. Whenever it happened, the fox held position until worry got the best of him and then scurried on to find his friends.

That's what he did after the plane crashed by the mountain. Sonic asked him to stay safe, which he did whilst sneaking into the base undetected. It's not like dust bunnies in air vents were dangerous in Sonic's book. In Tails', maybe, but that's why he wasn't Sonic.

And that's why he_ could_ vent his frustrations at will. Tails grinned like an idiot, running forward in search of a grated cover. As soon as he found one, the prodigy hopped to it, gleeful that squeezing through cramped engineering spots back at the workshop cured him of claustrophobic fits.

He crawled through enough ventilation chambers earlier that day to have a good idea how they worked. With the mountain ready to collapse, no one would hear him. GUN normally had semi-lethal fans inside the chambers to increase the air flow, a fact Tails' fur discovered on a routine expedition with Sonic. Fortunately, the military used Eggman's outpost for the launch, a structure much easier to penetrate. The villain had no human staff, so the air quality was as good as the compressors on the surface. Besides, Eggman rarely entered the non-world-domination part of his bases. As long as the machines didn't get covered by a creepy fungus, he didn't care.

Only he did care. Tails grumbled inwardly when he heard the whirring of a heavy fan. The blades spun at a speed above anything the fox had seen before. He would have considered kicking the blades out by the axis, but the momentum increased as he approached.

Tails wanted to study the fan in search of a weak spot. Little did he know that the fan was studying him at the same time. Two red diodes flashed behind the sharp blades, spinning ever faster to the point of vacuuming bits of debris from the chamber. Sparks flew when residual metal components met their end in the mill.

A cool sensation interrupted Tails' thoughts. It wasn't the fresh air, no. Tails succumbed to a chill coming from within, a fear he wished to put away. He grabbed his tails promptly to prevent them from entering the turbine and slowly retreated. As his figure moved back, the fan exerted more effort to keep the intruder close.

When it became apparent the fox boy's panic had more strength than the fan could resist, the red diodes shone brightly, stopping the blades dead in their tracks. Before Tails managed to look back and wonder, though, they spun in the opposite direction, grinding any solids stuck in the vent to coarse shrapnel. The mangled pieces were so hot they emitted light, a sign Tails took to his heart, retreating as quickly as the tunnel allowed it.

Haste made him lose a sense of direction in the engineering labyrinth. All the twists and turns looked the same. Some of them were blocked. While the fact he found old robot parts lying around didn't surprise him, the few new pieces brought great worry. How did they get there and, most importantly, why didn't the fan's noise decrease with distance?

Tails bit himself at the answer: the turbine could travel within the ductwork, and it had a craving for chopped vulpine. To make things worse, he found all the branches leading anywhere but the starting point were cordoned off with Egg Pawn shells bigger than the tunnel they rested in.

"It's a dead end…"

Looking back and forth nervously, the fox realised he had no choice. He started punching and hitting the closest red casing stuck in the air duct, a task much harder to accomplish due to limited space. A tail swipe that normally sliced through weaker bots barely tickled the castaway shell.

The bangs on his head waved backwards as he resorted to pushing. A rogue glance revealed the reason: the turbine made it to his level, loudly scratching against the air duct on approach.

"I gotta be brave. I gotta be brave."

In a fit of panic fuelled by the fan's LED eyes, Tails punched the shell to the point of puncturing a small hole. The fox breathed out to squeeze forward, pulling the broken metal aside with his body. It took great physical labour to pass the hurdle, and Tails would have been proud of the feat were it not for a sour revelation.

He was now stuck inside the dome-shaped armour.

A high-pitched whine escaped his mouth. Tails put up his dukes and hoped for the best, a fever dream on the probability level of Sonic going vegan. He would have found the notion his brain kept dreaming up such images funny, but the pursuer crashed the prospects of future puns by chewing into the Egg Pawn's casing.

Sparks flew when Tails saw the blades inch towards him. The fan moved slowly now that a lot of metal stood in its way. Tails shouldered the armour to repeat the breakthrough, to no avail.

Trapped and out of ideas, he pressed against the shell, gawking at the machine that spelled turbulent doom. The diodes seemed to change shape from idle to aggressive now that live prey had no chance of escaping further into the ventilation chamber.

He pushed and he kicked even in a moment of despair. Tails saw the fiery mulch that escaped the fan on the other side. He didn't want to be a part of it. Many lives depended on his survival.

The fan encountered a kick in the central rim, but didn't stop. A false touch meant that Tails would have to forget about footwear, which heated up very quickly upon connecting with the turbine. Blades circled around the axis, shredding whatever fur the suction managed to detach from the fox boy. It didn't take long for him to feel the singeing in his foot as the soles melted through.

"I am brave. I am…brave," he chanted, staring chaotic death in the eyes.

A clueless smile froze on his muzzle. Tails banged the armour with his back in a pathetic attempt to break through and closed his eyes. The grinder got so close Tails took up the foetal position to avoid losing his legs. Deafening noise caused by the fan's destruction made him oblivious to his surroundings while the mountain trembled at its foundation.

The next lucid sensation was his shoe being scraped off his foot. After that, the world entered a tumble dry cycle with the fox bouncing in the half-pipe-shaped armour. The commotion and their combined weight must have broken the air vent out of the ceiling.

An explosion reached his beleaguered ears. A tamer sound followed, a robotic growl about priority one hedgehogs. Tails gulped at the realisation: Metal Sonic was scouring the base himself. The fox could experience the needling sensation of the robot's area scan. He didn't move a muscle, fearing for his life, eyes closed. If anything, he'd have plenty of time to check out the surroundings, provided he survived the stand-off.

Metal buzzed unintelligibly, but Tails could tell the robot's irritation from afar. His claws rummaged through what sounded like a pile of scrap before vacating the premises, out of sight and out of mind. It took a few seconds of silence till Tails mustered up the courage to breathe again.

His eyes shot open, barely registering the difference in near complete darkness. Tails spread out his hands to get a better idea of his whereabouts. He crashed into a corridor full of Egg Pawn parts. There was little room left between the mass and the ceiling, which made lighting scant.

Initially, Tails thought he fell into an enormous trash compactor, but it was just a regular corridor on a regular floor, only completely packed. The reasons behind it boggled his mind while he crawled back into the broken air vent. Metal had rustled his way through the hallway, so the vent suddenly became a safe bet.

The problem was drawing up his location. The shakeup messed up the plan Tails created on his way. A few sniffs in the air duct reduced his confusion. The people still stuck in the launch control centre were nervous, and Tails had an innate ability to sense fear, a trait he took no pride in. Their scent guided him towards the goal.

Light emanating from a grated opening above the main hall encouraged him to move more carefully. Tails eyed the room underneath: Knuckles had broken in through a wall, and they subdued him with a powerful stasis ray, making the guardian glow bright blue. GUN staff were constantly tinkering with the large scrappy-looking device, which meant that Knuckles still had fight in him. It was Tails' chance.

All he needed was a diversion, something to distract the attention of armed guards. Everyone looked tense, casting repeated glances at the exit and the countdown, just gone under 45 seconds.

Tails found himself copying the operators' head movements, unaware that the fidgeting was the straw the grated plate needed to break out. It sent Tails flying down into the launch control centre with a loud crash.

He landed on the stasis array, scaring the service staff to bits. The hard landing made his rump sore, but it wasn't the only thing sore in the room.

A3 grabbed the intruder by the tails and chucked him at the floor. "I loved fox hunting since I was a kid. Die!" The man aimed his rifle at Tails, eager to turn the vulpine into a trophy.

"No, you!" a cloud of red fury exclaimed as it descended on A3.

Knuckles was boiling inside since capture. He saw the way A3 treated other GUN agents, so the man's threat to Tails made him good starting prey. The echidna punched the elite's armour into a frail net of fibre after knocking the sniper rifle out of his hands.

Tails could now take a free dash at the holo-key. A few service operatives huddled around it, protecting themselves with clipboards and hard hats, but they were more scared than dangerous.

"Protect the key! They'll destroy the probe! Help!" they shouted.

The fox looked at the countdown timer: twenty seconds left. He'd never make the deadline alone.

"Knuckles, they've trapped Sonic!" he yelled, pointing at the door.

GUN heard the staff's cries and sent most of Sonic's guards to storm the launch hall. Knuckles grinned at his prospects.

"On it!"

While Knuckles escorted the more aggressive grunts into background objects and walls, the operatives overseeing the launch managed to turn the stasis gun around. They were in such a hurry that the beam had little effect on Tails, but it was opportune enough for A3 to regain composure and strike him down.

"Sly fox, meet my gun."

Tails still felt numb after the energy blast, so he couldn't move quickly enough to dodge A3's aim. The agent looked confident at first, but he hesitated to fire.

A whisper as chilling as his welcome caused the reluctance: "You touch that trigger and I bite your fingers off."

"Up yours, hedgehog," the man snorted as he fired at Tails.

He disappeared in a flash of light-speed blue. So did the armoured door and enemy firearms. They were gone as quickly as a blue streak began circling the holo-key's pedestal. Most GUN agents fled from the scene, yet those bunched up to protect the key remained at their post. Snivelling, beaten and broken by a single hedgehog, they guarded the objective with their lives. Unlike weapon-toting jarheads, the engineers and scientists behind the launch showed resolve stronger than their will to survive. Or were the two somehow connected…

Tails could see it, too. At least, until the timer went down to one second and the lights switched off. Everything powered down, including the timer. Sonic couldn't feel any additional tremors from above, meaning the rocket hadn't fired. They aborted the launch.

The heroes cheered in unison almost as intensely as the service staff wept. Knuckles took it as a cue to unceremoniously push the people standing in his way to take what he wanted. Most of them complied, having seen what happened to A3, but the lead launch operator shined a flashlight in his face, his other hand put firmly on the holo-key.

Knuckles huffed at the bravado. "I'll be taking that."

"And do what?"

He glared, both at the flashlight and the passive aggression. "Move it."

The operator put the light down, so his other hand appeared on the pedestal. "The rocket's main thruster received an incomplete firing code. If we don't find enough power to transmit the complete sequence, it will self-destruct before you reach the top. The cargo will be incinerated along with half of the zone."

"You're bluffing."

It forced a fake laugh out of the lead operator. He turned around, arms high above his head. "No shit! This whole mountain is bluffing."

Sonic took a stand between them, facing the GUN agent. "Settle down, you two. How can we solve the problem?"

More flashlights diluted the darkness, having taken Sonic's words as a ready command. Engineers approached the stasis gun to dismantle the remaining active Chaos Drives. Those people were resourceful and not intending to die without a struggle. It left a firm impression on Sonic as well as the fact that Tails volunteered to help them rewire the battery packs.

An engineer approached the heroes. "Take these," he said as he offered each a hermetic gas mask. "Chaos Drives can be…fiddly."

He had a point: the moment GUN attached the third battery pack, its lid popped, releasing a cloud of thick smoke the people avoided like the plague. Apparently, it left crystalline residue on everything it touched, clothes and tissue alike. A swift kick sent the defunct Chaos Drive in the far end of the room. If the mountain was doomed, tidiness didn't matter.

A ring of eight Chaos Drives surrounded the holo-key. In a moment of truce, GUN operatives on the one side and Team Sonic on the other enabled the power sources to an amazing light show. Wiring put together in a hurry sparked and fizzled, but the key emitted enough light to make Tails smile. Feeding a transmitter so much power would surely work.

Tense seconds passed by. The pedestal has gotten very hot and the system would eventually short-circuit, yet the expected launch did not occur. The higher-ups had no good news from the surface.

"Something is jamming the signal," the lead operator and Tails said simultaneously.

"We need to-" they continued. Tails fell silent, subdued by choral flattery, allowing the man to finish: "Add more power."

Engineers found an extra Chaos Drive with some juice left; others were spent on containing Knuckles or too difficult to detach on short notice. The addition brought unsatisfactory results, making those present cringe. The head launch operator bit his lower lip and glanced at his team in search of ideas. Heads lowered sadly, unable to meet his gaze.

Tails was about to chime in with an alternative when Knuckles presented the Master Emerald shard he took out of A4's armour. The operator's eyes smiled at the brilliant light, but he didn't dare ask for it in fear of a backlash. Only when Knuckles pushed it into his hand that he gave the echidna a bow and brought the shard towards the ring.

"This will do nicely," the man whispered, absorbed by the view.

With the energy vested in the gem, they could dispose of the cumbersome Chaos Drives. Attaching it as a power source required delicate precision, a choice the operator regretted dearly when he lost balance and fell. He credited the fault to excessive stress, but a look at his feet provided a different answer.

The ground shook more violently than before, causing cracks in the floor. The cracks grew wider till strings of metal began emerging from them. They meshed together as they rose to puncture the ceiling and climb higher still. The head operator disappeared from view, taken up by one of the wild constructs. A closer look revealed the strings were made of robot parts of all shapes and sizes with one trait in common: Eggman's logo.

An engineer promptly caught the shard before it fell to the ground and attached it to the circuitry with the help of a loose wire and some saliva. The extra kick made the key change colours, lighting up the entire room for a moment.

Knuckles could tell by the humans' cheering and a loud boom coming from the surface that his idea worked. He smirked at the success, basking in collective gratitude. Unfortunately, their joy presented a problem.

"What have I done?!"


	18. One-handed Applause

**Chapter 18: One-handed Applause**

Freak crawled on all fours, dribbling through a hole in his permanent smile. It wasn't his fault; he didn't ask the military to steal the elite squad's helicopters. Sure, he asked a clerk back at Central City to return the news crews home in one piece, but conversations stalled on the level of a tour bus.

When the man saw the extent of his miscalculation, the pleasant surprise in the form of a PR trip for the reporters quickly turned into despair. A1 was incensed, and taking it out on defenceless management plankton was the first thing the field commander considered.

Neither begging nor tears softened A1's fist. He brutalised the offender in a way he saw fitting, ridding the smiley Freak of his most precious asset. The PR assistant was reduced to picking up bits of his brilliant teeth from the blood-stained floor. He's been through pain and humiliation before, an unavoidable career hazard in dealings with Eggman and his cronies. Even a part of Sonic's clique didn't shy away from waving fists at random.

But they always paid him in full, and the medical plan covered the dents. With A1, the matter was different altogether. Freak got beaten to a pulp by a GUN officer, someone he had to tolerate despite the abuse.

Otherwise, nothing he had accomplished that day would matter. Feeding Sonic a motion tracker and getting Knuckles to open up provided valuable intel. The more they knew about the anthropomorphic heroes, the safer the government bigwigs would feel. Throwing in a few reporters to produce lavish broadcasts about the military's success on what used to be deadly Eggman territory acted as a personal bonus.

The presence of civilians muddled the waters for those used to handling things with bullets, which made Freak's further suggestions undesirable. He wished he knew how badly the locals' opinion would strike him down. Being picked up by Mighty Moth, a detestable mercenary with a detestable background, was just the beginning of Freak's torment. He had to hide in the security room throughout most of his stay on the launch site because of a hostile spy, someone interested in GUN's utter failure.

He felt safe deep inside the mountain, yet opportunity brought him out into the light. The loss and anguish would pass, provided he made it out alive. It looked like that part was entirely up to A1, whose opinions Freak was gathering on the floor.

A1 regretted the outburst. Normally, these resulted in a lot of paperwork back at HQ. The situation drove him over the limit, though. Freak needed to learn his lesson. If not the current launch, PR put all the military projects it touched in jeopardy thanks to an overwhelming need to brag. So what if GUN stood up to Eggman in a desert hub? The hell command was thinking when they allowed civilians to film? Security through obscurity. The general populace would find out about the solar probe from a report five years later, anyway. Rushing things only caused harm.

The field commander had no idea how many soldiers would suffer the consequences of PR's involvement. Well, he had an idea, a good one, in fact, but he didn't want to look at the radiation sensors. Those placed closest to the reactor malfunctioned after the readings went off the scale. The issue must have spread since the last time he paid attention.

Right now, all that mattered was the rocket taking off. If it left the planet's atmosphere, A1's mission would be complete, a continuation of a perfect track record. Latest events made him believe success wouldn't come without a fight. He had to fake evacuation to set up an ambush for Sonic and score a deal with Mighty Moth to use his prototype's stasis ray inside the base. Freak must have caught wind of the agreement and blackmailed the merc into sending his three stooges to steal the helicopters in exchange for silence.

A1 snorted at the imaginary plan. They could have brought the civilians onto Mighty Moth's air fortress; it had plenty of room. Stupid PR…

The idea that some of his teammates had a positive attitude towards Freak troubled A1. Fortunately, A4's gear sustained critical damage and was no longer a part of the mission and A3's post in the launch control centre reduced the likelihood that he'd leave the mountain alive. Overseeing the fickle nerds meant A3 would evacuate last. Since the launch was timed in parallel with nuclear meltdown, only the most resourceful agents on the surface would escape their fate.

Life's a bitch, and then they die. It has been a while since Group A returned from a mission in full. Casualties were a must to assure fresh blood joined A1's team. Working with the same agents proved risky in the past, but the mission's outlook meant a good shakeup in the roster.

A1 put on his helmet, gearing up to leave, and was flooded with messages from A3. The cocky kid requested backup as well as permission to eliminate the prisoners. Sonic acted as collateral, so killing him would likely tip the balance in Eggman's favour…and prove difficult altogether. The red guy, however, was a different story: undoing him would render Freak's report on the echidna null and void.

He opened a channel with A3 to grant a part of the request. There was no response. Diagnostics in his hi-tech visor didn't help, nor did yelling at the agent. Connection lost.

Lights blinked. The room became dim, and A1 rushed to the transmitter he used to disengage the reactor's control rods. Nothing. He was now blind to the events inside the mountain.

"Shit."

He demanded the on-board comms connected him to the launch control centre. Unintelligible screams reached him, but no one could take the request.

The rocket stood tall, unharmed by whatever sent the rest of the outpost into a blackout. It was a minute consolation, as service personnel needed power to finalise the fire sequence. He counted on Little Moth to deliver the proper holo-key to the launch site, but that went to hell quickly. Controlling the cargo hold's capricious security system with a bootleg copy was a continuous nuisance: the self-destruct mechanism would start counting down if not fed the correct novel-length password every time.

Every next iteration grew more complicated, requiring an increasing amount of power to crack. The fake had the juice to reset security, yet it could not disable the alarm completely after GUN triggered it. Engineers demanded waiting until the last second every time, explaining that circuits would not handle frequent discharges. The alternative was getting the rocket airborne prematurely, against the Commander's direct order.

The Commander… He put the top team in jeopardy. They were not supposed to tamper with the spacecraft's contents, period. Cracking the cargo hold open to secure the secondary objective was a grave mistake. GUN had to take leaps from one trade-in to the next after that.

No point in regret. A1 had pending nuclear fallout on his shoulders. The reactor malfunctioned before the designated time. Whether it was sabotage or a technical error, the conclusion remained the same: they had to evacuate immediately.

A1 contacted Mighty Moth, whose aircraft remained operational. "Hover to the warehouse. We're heading out."

"Watch fireworks from above? I had a feeling it would blow hard."

The merc's poor choice of words added to the next part left a sour taste in A1's mouth. He did not know how long the reactor would take to tear the mountain apart or the destructive potential of a rocket with an incomplete fire order. Maybe he would find out how much was needed to kill a meddling hedgehog or two, at least.

He fixated a custom-built rocket launcher onto his shoulder and aimed at the ceiling. A1 had no patience to manoeuvre to the nearest exit, so he decided to place one at arm's length.

Freak had lifted a finger in protest when the warhead blew a large hole close to the corner walls. The blast wave gave him a concussion strong enough to scatter the teeth he had painstakingly gathered all over the floor. If that was how GUN retreated these days, Freak had better chances at survival stuck on the mountain, but A1 considered the alternative.

"Catch," he yelled as he threw a boxy backpack at the PR assistant.

The container was so heavy Freak could barely lift it. Still, he knew how the military treated dead weight, as opposed to those carrying it. Great rewards await those who suffer, no?

"What's inside?" he asked in a gargling blink of boldness.

"Explosives."

More suffering instead of compensation. Freak gulped, putting it on, and shambled to the hollow where A1 was waiting to give him a lift. Strong downward wind from the Stingray prototype greeted them. Freak was proud of the flying fortress GUN acquired, but mostly because his department gave the bumblebee-like aircraft a proper name and heritage. Hopefully, its armour fared well with appearance.

Mighty Moth opened the rear loading bay for them to enter. Inside, they saw numerous GUN agents the mercenary had picked up. Many more remained on the ground, including the brightest scientists and engineers. Their dedication to the launch seemed greater than that of a soldier, putting up another hurdle for A1 in the process.

The prototype still carried the potentially indestructible cistern GUN could not allow to fall into Eggman's hands. The people on board added more idle weight to the craft, as very few agents had the training to operate the obscure Stingray. Had Sonic used real guns instead of speedy headbangs, A1's predicament would have been so much easier.

Freak wanted to stay in the loading area, but A1 hauled him further into the airship, past the armoury full of hunter drones and ramjets, towards the bridge. Mighty Moth welcomed them with a smiling face; his mission ended when he recovered the containment vessel. Likewise, Jojo 1 felt at ease, having concluded the most terrifying part of his own assignment.

The mercenary trusted Jojo 1 not to do anything stupid. Hence, the convoy agent managed to persuade Mighty Moth to grab a few passengers for bonus points. GUN committed a classic blunder of not providing enough lifeboats for their sinking operation, a fault both credited to A1, an untrustworthy man Mighty Moth held in low regard. Background checks revealed an increase in casualties among top tier agents since A1 assumed his role in Group A. Mighty Moth had no intention of becoming part of his boss' failure statistic. When A1 approached Jojo 1 with an intention that meant no good for the Stingray fortress, he knew the statistic would fight for its share.

"Off the trigger, Jojo 1," the field commander ordered.

Mighty Moth turned on the auto-pilot to face the intruder from his executive chair. "I am in charge of this ship."

A1 snorted at the pretence and approached Mighty Moth. Standing upright an explosive launcher in hand, he towered above the mercenary. A1 glared down at the pilot and tried to sound level-headed: "You are in charge of the rudder, nothing else. My launch, my rules."

He was right. Insubordination had its perks, like wiping the arrogance off A1's face, but Mighty Moth put up his hands defensively and turned back to the cockpit, mumbling. "Your failure."

"We'll see." A1 walked up to Jojo 1 hurriedly. "Off the weapons, boy. Chop chop!"

Jojo 1 hesitated, looking at Mighty Moth for a sign. None came, so he relinquished the post. The mercenary ordered Jojo 1 to stand by in the armoury, a request he was glad to adhere to. As Jojo 1 moved towards the exit, something grabbed his leg. It was Freak.

"He'll get us killed," the PR man whispered. Lacking multiple teeth, the sound that escaped his lips was very different from what was intended, yet A1 must have heard the sentiment.

"Shut up!" A1 yelled, most of his concentration now on the weapon controls.

Mighty Moth ignored the commotion, more vested in deciphering the weird signals coming from the mountain. No one else saw them, like they didn't see the amiable correspondence he had with Eggman after letting the villain escape in one piece. GUN had fewer things under control than they thought, a fact that worried Mighty Moth more than he'd have liked. Actually, the standoff between GUN, Eggman and Sonic destabilised the situation enough to make the outcome unpredictably bad.

He didn't want to be a part of the outcome, so he powered up the thrusters to shift away from the warehouse. With enough speed to blur the view on the virtual screens in front of the pilot's seat, he expected no one to object.

One PR man ruined a perfect plan.

"Is that Alfie?" he asked.

A1 moved his gaze from unlocking the arms' fire buttons to the sight on the ground. The bowl-like windscreen meant to allow a wider view angle to the weapons operator gave him an upsetting image: a bleeding A3 crawled out of the safehouse and started waving prone at them. Mighty Moth paid more attention to the ground than the rest, noticing metal formations, some of them bloody, cracking the concrete.

"Pick him up," A1 ordered. Whatever happened down there, A3 would have a story to tell.

Mighty Moth waved his hand dismissively. "We have too much weight already."

"Should have thought ahead. Do it, merc."

He was angry inside for having to submit to the command. Mighty Moth saw how the steel protrusions grew in size and number as he approached. Whatever caused red-coloured metal to appear on top of the mountain held great power to support the process. The mercenary did not want to fly within striking distance of that power.

In the end, he turned the craft on a dime and requested the passengers inside the loading bay to grab A3. He explicitly demanded them to do so without touching the ground. Mighty Moth hoped it would help shave off a second while the mountain shook uncontrollably. The dull metal edges he saw in the ground turned into thick beams, flexing and gaining altitude more quickly than Stingray descended.

Before he received confirmation that A3 was on board, he heard A1 laugh. Mighty Moth found it unbelievably daft and was about to reprimand him when he saw the reason: the rocket's main engine fired up full throttle. Four solid boosters joined the action, roaring thunder that nearly shattered the reinforced windscreens.

A1 cheered as loudly as the rocket boomed up from its cradle. "Success! In your face, Sonic!"

Mighty Moth found the rear camera footage A1 was already gawking at. Sonic the Hedgehog and his red friend stood in the bunker's doorway, shocked by the launch taking place. The mercenary saw a look of disgust on Sonic's face, something he was worried about. The rest of his crew had similar reflections, building up the awkward situation, in which only one man was laughing.

Worry quickly turned to horror as Mighty Moth steered his ship away from the mountain. He manoeuvred so sharply someone may have fallen out of the still-open loading gate. He closed it immediately and disregarded the screams because things were about to get truly hectic.

The rocket caused a great amount of discontent, fuzzing up the readings and forcing Mighty Moth to rely solely on manual flight. A1 was of no help, huffing at how the sudden change of course jolted him. That's what safety belts were there for, jarhead!

"Have you lost your mind?" A1 demanded, his tone growing weak by the last word. A change of gears in his mind beckoned a different question: "The hell is that?"

Stingray shook violently in response. Mighty Moth saw that one of the engines was damaged and they were leaking fuel. A large piece of metal protruding from the mountain had pierced the ship. Another splinter shook the passengers, making Freak slide from one edge of the room to another like a ball.

"Mommy-mommy-mommy," Freak whined.

His slide ended half-way: he hit a battered Egg Pawn's case that managed to penetrate the hull, ending up inside the bridge. The robot's shell had large bullet holes at the top, so Freak could have a look at the contents. He screamed at the revelation and started kicking the case back into the floor until Mighty Moth managed to free the ship from the protrusions' hold.

The mountain had grown thousands of spiky metal hairs by then. They pierced through buildings and storage tanks, causing explosion chains. Relentless, they twirled and combined like strands of muscle, forming a structure above the outpost-turned-graveyard. The animated metal was gaining shape and size at an alarming rate, so Mighty Moth saved any questions for later. He really-really did not care, but the smell that spread in the bridge during the intrusion made it obvious that innocent people died on the ground, and there was no way to help them. The only thing that mattered was hauling out in one piece. Even with a damaged engine, the sturdy craft could reach salvation.

An ambiguous message appeared in his conversation log. "What is the sound of one hand clapping?"

Like on cue, the robotic strings accelerated growth, some of them attaining absurd heights, above the Stingray and even the successfully launched main rocket. Mighty Moth knew what the message meant: Eggman. It was Eggman. He spared Eggman's life.

And now the villain was about to crush everyone with the biggest robot arm ever made.


	19. Hold of the ME

**Chapter 19: Hold of the ME**

Knuckles recovered the Master Emerald shard. The engineers were glad to hand it away. After all, it was the guardian's bright idea to be helpful and fire half of the gem that kept his island afloat into space!

He'd wished for a way to unleash the bitterness, but mauling unarmed humans would have been unjust, and the controller's well-being depended on Knuckles' own. Indignant, he swallowed the emotional gunk and tore the holo-key off its pedestal, turning to leave as quickly as his feet would allow.

"Let's go," he grumbled.

Sonic nodded in agreement while Tails hesitated. The GUN outpost had suffered enough damage to implode at any second now, so the prodigy could have shown some thoughtfulness by spearheading their effort to the surface.

The fox boy had buried that wish. In Knuckles' view, the kid acted selfishly. Tails got a first-hand invitation to an adventure, what he'd been always asking for, but he just stood there like a dolt staring at the eroded floor. It boiled the echidna's blood as much as his own actions. Sonic realised that before Knuckles could address the issue the only way he knew, with his knuckles.

Sonic went to grab Tails' hand to cancel whatever made him sulk. There were metal spikes crushing the mountain from the inside, a rocket with Shadow heading where no hedgehog has gone before and Eggman working alongside GUN to cause maximum destruction. The fox needed a lesson in timing his emotional outbursts.

Their minds firmly set on the goal, the two heroes failed to see the reason in Tails' deviation. The remaining humans felt much differently. They were on to the kid, and so they, too, hid improbable smiles in the blood-smudged debris, waiting for him to make a move. It was clear to them that Knuckles didn't care about the mountain while Sonic had more than enough responsibility on his hands.

Tails would be their hero, or a martyr.

A discrete glance at the scientists' faces gave Sonic the answer his two-tailed friend couldn't word out. The fox had made his choice. Fair enough, if the boy wanted to be an adult, a lesson in responsibility would do him well.

He left the prodigy with a small nod, and grabbed Knuckles for an extreme escalation tour.

Sonic should have felt better about Tails deciding to stay on the ground to save a bunch of clever people. Right now, though, running at a sole-melting speed, another setback brought irritation to his face.

Irritation he gladly vented on the crumbling walls and unhinged doors. The heat from the rocket was getting to Sonic already even though he remained many floors below the surface. Like a metal spike, an idea hit the hedgehog while he was blazing up a stairwell.

Sonic mounted a mobile girder, one of the many he would have just dodged, and put Knuckles up to act as a combination of a shield and a battering ram. The echidna guardian was waiting for his time to shine, burrowing through concrete and stone on his way up, perched atop a large piece of scrap that thrust its way towards the sky.

Every floor passing below their heads hit the duo hard. Sonic had to continuously roll on the metal slab's tip to prevent it from turning into a threat whilst the echidna mauled the way up as quickly as he could. Judging by the heat, a ride on Eggman's latest plan to make everyone miserable would not get them to the surface in time. Knuckles would have to step up in his part.

"Hey!" the hedgehog began. His eyes widened from a distraction. "Watch out!"

Another metal spike came from the side, about to collide with Knuckles' torso. Sonic rapidly switched the direction of his razor spin, leading to a searing tension in his already stressed quills. The swivel sent him flying into the threatening spike at the cost of bending the protective spines to the limit, nearly slicing them off his skin at the highest point.

Knuckles never heard him yell nor did he notice the incoming threat. All that time, he was too busy digging his way to the Master Emerald. The echidna's eyes were instinctively sealed shut, both because of the debris and his own bitterness. The roaring heat from above gave him all the direction he needed.

Soon, the emerald would be back in its shrine. Soon.

And if it didn't happen soon enough… Urgh, Knuckles' imagination didn't have the capacity to work out the game over scenario in those conditions.

When something tugged on his arm, Knuckles was ready to fight back blindly, and almost smashed Sonic in the face. Only when Blue Blur started yelling at him did the echidna become fully aware of the situation: Sonic had found a clean way to the surface, the last leg.

It was the same staircase Freak had used to lure him underground. A partially-open battered portal greeted them at the exit. Harsh wind blew sand into the safehouse through the opening.

Neither of them felt like lifting, so they hit the frame till it gave in, letting them leave.

"No way…" Sonic whispered.

The imagery promised an uphill struggle. GUN's Stingray stood between them and the rocket. Eggman's metalwork spiralled into the sky, ignoring the inferno that all but blinded the seasoned heroes. Among the chaos, Sonic spotted A1 inside the heavy assault ship. Having picked up his lackey, the man behind GUN's exploits in Rail Canyon cheered at his apparent victory, unaware that Sonic wasn't the villain the military should have been watching out for.

Sonic glared at the insolence, but the soldier made his message clear. "In my face, huh? Eggman's never done well after saying that." He snorted. "Let's see if you party harder!"

Knuckles had already gotten a lead on the hedgehog, climbing onto a metal spear that struck the GUN aircraft, keeping it in position. The pilot exerted maximum effort to make Stingray fly into safe distance when the fuel tank sprang a leak. Another beam spiralled up, out to hit the aircraft's bridge.

It was his chance. Sonic used the reformed robotic scrap as a rail to cling onto GUN's vessel while it stayed in place. Fire burst out from one of the assault vessel's turbines. Unlike the damage from the first encounter with Sonic, that would take ages to repair.

The hedgehog got to the top of the metal string connecting the aircraft to the mountain and punched the tip, an old Egg Pawn's shell. It was thrust with enough force to make a hole in Stingray's armour, enabling Sonic to further exploit the weakness. He easily cracked through the recycled metal to latch onto the mobile fortress. The action must have caused great panic inside because he could hear the screams despite the space rocket firing up full throttle.

Like on cue, Stingray took a sharp turn, disregarding any damage. The manoeuvre was sudden enough to lose Knuckles, who glided towards the next string of metal in GUN's path, but Sonic stayed, hanging down with his hand struggling to pull him fully inside the bridge. If anyone could stop the rocket, it had to be the people on board.

GUN couldn't shake him off by making loops because they were one engine down and over maximum weight, carrying many troops as well as the recovered containment cistern. A1 considered stomping the intruding hand, about to become a whole hedgehog of a problem, till a brilliant idea hit him.

The helicopters! A1 still had the elite helicopters. While they were ordered to stay within a safe distance from the site during the launch because of Freak's meddling, they had military-grade pilots.

Sonic remained too distracted to see a chopper sneak up behind him. There was no way GUN would risk the operation's success after all the expense they went through to get the PR machine geared for action. Putting up a first-hand show by popping a few extra large victory fireworks wouldn't hurt the press ratings, A1 believed. If anything, the reporters freeloading on the helicopter would be grateful.

A volley of homing missiles took off towards Stingray. From the passengers' point of view, it was madness: GUN fired at their own, and the reporters refused to believe the chopper's tiny pilot had anything except real rounds on offer. Cameras rolled to capture every moment of impending doom.

The civilians aboard the attacking helicopter gasped in astonishment when they noticed Sonic dangling from the main vessel. The hedgehog was seemingly unaware of the projectiles.

Some of the newsagents excitedly reached for their best capture devices. Answers would come later. The scoop was now. Others looked greatly concerned. What happened? What was the renowned hero up to?

Flashes burst in a salvo exceeding the real explosion. Sonic didn't know what hit him, but he was suckered as badly as the time he got too clever with Metal. To make matters worse, when the first missile blew him off Stingray's hull, another shot homed in on the hedgehog with equal force. Two effects blurred together, turning his vision eerily purple. Sonic visualised stills of losing altitude along with muscle power. Darkness and high-pitched static filled the gaps between consecutive hits. GUN weren't randomly throwing cars at the hedgehog; they were intent on hitting him where it hurt and making every hit matter to the fullest.

Cameras clicked again and again once the next fireball engulfed Blue Blur's body. So did the third and fourth: the hedgehog led a string of fiery petals on a collision course with the mountain. By then, camera crews were too engaged in taking the shots of their lives.

Barely a second later, helicopter pilots were ordered to retreat to the closest GUN outpost, no questions asked. Even if the press had a million of them, none of the pilots would answer them. Truthfully, none of them knew what happened or why it happened. Mighty Moth gave the order to fire. That's all they needed to know. Someone else would have to care for the outcome.

A charred blue mess of smoke made its miserable way down. Sonic didn't know how he felt at that very instance, and he hoped to Chaos he would not find out. A feeling in the back of his head warned him about being too conscious at the wrong time.

He was woken up by a light much weaker than the all-consuming blows he took. It was not the light that belonged to the warhead when it…cracks against one's back, rattling up a hedgehog's essence. No, it was a good light, the one that made Sonic smile without having a reason to.

Up above, he saw the space rocket cocooned in a greenish hue. Even though the engines spew multi-storey tongues of flame, the spacecraft rose barely at a fraction of the expected speed. The unnatural scene looked beautiful in Sonic's delirious mind.

That's what Knuckles meant when he spoke to Tails. The Master Emerald felt what would happen and it began actively resisting the fate GUN made out for the gem, an end more cruel than anything Eggman has had in store so far.

"Come on! The ME won't hold much longer!" a harsh voice rang in his ears.

Knuckles! Knuckles caught him mid-way. The guardian did his best not to lose Sonic while clinging to a thick metal shaft that elevated towards the rocket. The mechanical strands spiking from the mountain had begun to coil, conjoining into thicker fibres. Such destruction erased the remnants of GUN's presence on the mountain.

Sonic felt his limbs, still crusty from an abundance of white flame, regain their youthful energy thanks to the emerald's grace. Muscles tightened and joints slid smoothly. The exterior, too, seemed refreshed. The hedgehog would give GUN a run for their money, a marathon extravaganza.

He patted Knuckles' shoulder gratefully before heading towards the rocket inferno via the improvised robotic rail. The echidna did his best to keep up while reserving a certain distance. They couldn't risk getting caught in the same explosion with so much at stake.

Stingray would offer plenty, intent on assuring a successful endgame for its mission. The military fought a furry rat riding animated scrap. Surely, the corps' finest had the guts and firepower to terminate any and all bad will thrown against them?

Machineguns hummed into action. A stream of bullets struck the smoke-covered metal overgrowths to test their strength. Laser targeting pinpointed the weakest links for rocket pods to cripple the enemy's mobility. With Sonic grounded, the spacecraft would have no difficulty fighting off the Master Emerald's resistance.

The heavy assault ship grazed multiple robotic fibres rising from the mountain to see Sonic jump from one to the next, using debris as a series of launch pads to gain altitude. Intense missile fire reduced the hedgehog's speed, but he kept on climbing. GUN needed a dozen Stingrays to properly level the hyperactive metal weeds.

There were too many. Mighty Moth diverted some power to support systems in hopes of recovering the blazing engine. The heat coming from the spacecraft's exhaust made extinguishing even the tiniest spark a Sisyphean labour. Cooling systems inside the bridge malfunctioned due to the gaping hole, putting more pressure on the edgy crew.

Sonic had enough experience timing his jumps when everything was falling apart to force Stingray to retreat in the only direction it could – up. GUN kept their distance to avoid another boarding, yet they couldn't stop the hero's advance.

Knuckles laughed heartily. "Looks like Eggman's on our side now!"

Indeed, were it not for Eggman's metal framework reaching out towards the rocket, Sonic would have been skirting defeat. It didn't change Sonic's opinion on the maniacal doctor or give him false hopes about his allegiance, but the doc usually offered support when things got down for everyone in general. If Eggman went all the way to provide support, what were his bets?

Losing Shadow and diminishing the Master Emerald's influence sounded like a big gain for the world domination side of things, unless there was something else Eggman did not want anyone to know. Regardless, Sonic had a friend to save and Knuckles was counting on his help.

"What's that sound?!" Knuckles yelled.

Sonic looked down at the source. The spikes and strands twisted together into solid mass cracking through the edges of the mountain, destroying its natural shell. The entire launch site was engulfed by recycled robotics. Its ascent accelerated so quickly Sonic had to grab hold to avoid being squeezed between two overarching metal walls.

Whatever had caused the growth spurt, it must have been powerful. Sonic sensed the rapid outward pulse within the transformed landmass. He didn't like the sensation even though it played in his favour. Something foul was happening down there, and it crippled the Master Emerald's dampening effect on the rocket.

By then, however, the hedgehog had a worse threat to worry about: Eggman's brainchild cast an enormous shadow on the surrounding canyons. The animated robotic parts were nearly done forming an arm tall enough and wide enough to crush the spacecraft along with everyone else in the vicinity.

Stingray's crew stared at the unholy construct's fingers twitching into action. Low intensity fields sparked up the metal body to gradually power the whole arm. GUN's assault ship looked like a fly in the red, yellow and black man-made background.

"Mother of Chaos…" Mighty Moth whispered.

A1 growled in response. "We'll be having none of that." He grabbed Freak's backpack and stormed out of the bridge.

Heads turned painfully aware that Stingray couldn't even tickle a monstrosity of that size. Nothing GUN possessed in its arsenal had the capacity to disable the arm without destroying the rocket they were intent on protecting no matter the cost.

Knuckles was having the time of his life, though. Perched atop one of the hand's fingertips, he smashed his fists together to take a victorious glide onto the rocket. Sonic, also, mapped an easy route that completely dodged GUN's offensive capability. He only needed to make it faster than the main electric surge would.

The amount of power that coursed upwards through the metal was enough to make the air at the base glow. Sonic didn't want to find out whether it licked hedgehogs. Knowing Eggman, it would probably sting.


	20. Hazard Extreme

**Chapter 20: Hazard Extreme**

Sonic made the jump and blazed onwards, leaving broken Egg Pawn shells behind. Not that it mattered. The gigantic arm had more than enough metal pumping through its veins for a tiny speed demon to cause real damage. Eggman wanted his hands on the GUN spacecraft, and he would grab his prize both figuratively and literally.

A storm brewed at the base of the roboticised mountain. Power surges affected the nearby surroundings to a startling degree, spewing fire while the ground shook with every ton of weight added to the structure. Bullet Station has experienced many destructive transformations thanks to Eggman's manias, but it was never defaced so utterly.

Debris fell from the robot arm's skyscraper-like fingers as they moved. Sonic had to watch out on his way to the top. Using a hazard for mobility involved certain risks, such as sharp edges, a changing landscape and chaotic sparks about to fry his tail.

A pair of trusty red sneakers guided him on the gravity-defying dash. Unfortunately, electricity was equally tenacious at fuelling the massive weapon to grill Sonic in the process. The hero could have sworn that the full load of incoming power melted the arm's surface, making it eerily shiny. Its glow was more intense than the Master Emerald's.

He didn't know how Knuckles felt about the gem giving in, but Sonic was bound to find out. The hedgehog had seen Knuckles glide safely to the rocket's nose cone with Stingray pursuing the guardian. GUN sure didn't want to let it go without a fight.

The sore losers would get a lot sorer if they got on Knuckles' bad side, which seemed to be exactly what they intended to do. Sonic's own pains were on the way up with the Master Emerald's healing glow withdrawing to make room for a seething shudder from below. Eggman did more than just feed the arm electricity, which made Sonic think a jolt would count as icing on the cake.

Even though Sonic didn't look at the mechanical palm, he could tell the current had already made it there by the strong reflections every metal part gave off. Once fully charged, the metal didn't just glow or shimmer; it pulsated like a pus-filled tumour.

Sonic's spines started fuzzing up from the static, ramping difficulty up in controlling his aerodynamics, a bad way to start the leap towards the spacecraft. Regardless, he had one chance and one chance only. If he pushed back with enough force, he'd manage as long as the wind played in his favour.

That's when things got slippery. It started as a nip at the tail and a squeeze in his pupils. The light quickly edged past the supersonic hedgehog, turning Eggman's enormous robot arm operational in its entirety.

He whined at the sensation. Sonic couldn't see; the intensity bothered his eyes even when they were sealed shut. While the light didn't hurt him directly, he could feel the heat in his shoes, an unnatural heat the extra sturdy material was unused to. Sonic had to cut the run short and roll up into a ball to reduce friction.

Big mistake. The quills got a taste of the electric field already present in the robotic index finger. Hardened spines were needled by pain the moment they touched the surface. His back went numb once struck from quill to bone and nerve. The flurry of nasty that flooded the rest of his body nearly drove his organs in reverse. Every step brought his muscles closer to losing control, about to collapse. The very idea of what would happen when he'd touch the metal with an unprotected limb seemed to keep him going. Sonic wasn't a doctor, yet he could tell the experience got his heart gasping for a break.

Sonic couldn't afford one while being stirred by a hostile energy field. A blind leap thrust him off the metal shape teeming with static into the air. For a split second, he could breathe deeply. It was far from enough to recuperate after having his quills drilled into by electricity, but it had to do because the flight directed him onto the next hazard. That one bore the GUN insignia.

The military greeted him with guns blazing. Angry about being reduced to a speck of dust hanging in Eggman's way, GUN unleashed their bitterness on a target they considered feasible.

Unfortunately for them, Sonic had learnt his lesson. He caught one of the smart bombs sent to blow him to pieces and rode it back home. GUN had to shoot it down to avoid accidental self-destruction. When a cloud of flame and smoke erupted before them, the military had a faint hope the hedgehog was done for.

They were proven wrong by a thud. Sonic used the explosion to trick the gunner into giving him a smooth landing atop Stingray. The rest was about announcing his arrival by continuously smashing against the annoying assault ship. Sonic could respect their willingness to endure, and yet he didn't really appreciate the killer intent behind it. If anything, GUN would serve as a launch pad to reunite him with Knuckles.

A promotion awaited the agent brave enough to shake Sonic off. Stingray had the armour to withstand a homing attack. Though, Mighty Moth was worried that he'd need more than that to counter a hundred. When the lights started blinking and steering assist malfunctioned, he had to resort to drastic measures.

If Sonic went for it to dodge electricity, he was in for a shocking reversal. Mighty Moth enabled the ship's protective shield, electrocuting everyone on board along with Sonic; they didn't have the time to fix insulation in the bridge, and all went to hell from there.

The ship fell on its side, colliding with one of the robot arm's fingers. Whoever had resisted screaming up to that point cried out along with the rest. Safety belts popped loose from impact, chucking passengers into a solid wall like ragdolls.

Another mass of metal swung in front of the ship, a bare miss that could have easily sliced Stingray in half a blink earlier. The pilot was in crunch mode. Even if the engines went back online, they were too heavy to avoid a tough landing on Eggman's hand of doom.

He was so distracted he didn't spot Sonic stuck on the windshield. A1 did. The field commander aimed his rocket launcher at Sonic and fired it inside the ship.

The crew was pounded further into the floor by the missile's deafening sound. It crashed through the windscreen, amounting to a startled look on Sonic's face. The expression disappeared the moment Sonic put out his arms to grab the projectile. GUN elites were prone to carrying special weaponry, and A1's was his ticket to finally reaching Knuckles on top of the world.

Mighty Moth worked feverishly with the engineering team to put together the resources required to jumpstart the ship's systems. They succeeded in rebooting the flight controls, but the craft was too heavy to stop the descent. Malicious fingers twitched nearby, each powerful enough to permanently end GUN's presence in Bullet Station.

"Too heavy," Mighty Moth piped. He kept eyeing a temperature gauge for the operational engine. Losing it meant losing the battle in its entirety.

"Do it," A1 growled. The field commander didn't wait for feedback. Instead, he grabbed the pilot's hand and set thrust to maximum.

An orange aura came from the side, blowing heat in his face. The damaged engine spewed fire instead of pulling force and the backup huffed tiredly enough to break the cooling system. Stingray's descent slowed down in an instant, but the rocket along with Sonic was still heading in the opposite direction, up.

There was no way the ship would hold it. It would break on the spot. GUN labelled Stingray's acquisition as a loading vehicle, for goodness sakes.

"This is suicide!" Mighty Moth yelled.

"This is your job. Do I need to repeat myself?"

The mercenary looked around confusedly, announcing one last order and a whisper. "Mask on! May Solaris give me strength…" At that, he put on an oxygen mask, eyes firmly set on the goal.

It really was suicide. Even at maximum thrust, Stingray would never catch up with the blue hedgehog. Every nut and bolt keeping the ship together shook as if about to give up its last breath.

A1 realised the gravity of their predicament. Hence, he curiously eyed the rear bay door's opening switch. If Stingray shed a bit of weight, they'd get a free boost. It was their chance. All he needed was to sacrifice enough. A1 extended his hand towards the button, unaware that Mighty Moth clutched his pistol at the same time.

Insubordination? No. If the military treated its soldiers like dead weight, A1 would act as such, being a soldier himself. Mighty Moth was bound by contract, not life.

Stingray shot up into the sky with renewed vitality at the press of a button. A1 ordered an auto release of cargo attached to the ship. The multi-ton cistern Mighty Moth worked on recovering was sent down to plummet back into Eggman's hold. A1 made his sacrifice. Now that the weight in the form of an ultra-durable alloy capable of imprisoning Shadow the Hedgehog weighed on the ship no more, Mighty Moth didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

He rightfully expected A1 to eject GUN soldiers. Instead, the bastard of a commander gave up Mighty Moth's objective. The mercenary's mission was a failure now, but he'd settle the score later. At last, the ship could run on a suitable upwards trajectory.

If only it possessed the speed to catch a space rocket…

A1 sat down in the gunner's chair, tightened his safety belts and muttered: "You'll thank me for this."

Upon saying those words, he tinkered with his missile launcher to transmit a signal. It resulted in a grating noise that came from the engine room as well as a bright blue force field high above, with Sonic in the middle.

Mighty Moth wiped his eyes in disbelief: sensors were in the green again! Whatever A1 did back there got the engines into shape. In fact, they've had enough excess power to make it. He expected A1 to gloat about the glorious save, yet the field commander just sat there, more tense than before, watching the cistern fall.

"Go vertical! Chop cho-op!" A1 yelled.

Once Stingray adjusted its alignment, positioning the pilot's cockpit at the very bottom, Mighty Moth grinned at the prospects. Reverse thrusters were intact. Switching directions to ascend nose-down would cause a short, but extreme strain on the systems. Carefully…

Mechanical switches rerouted power and the ship's propulsion system went in reverse. The pilot saw tongues of fire from his cockpit, and these did belong to Stingray. The ship's set of rotary blades kicked in to assist, broadening the smile on Mighty Moth's masked face, a stark contrast to A1.

"Chop, merc," the commander half-hissed. "You won't live if you see this…"

He didn't ask. A1 didn't enjoy the idea of the secret containment vessel ending up with the enemy even though recovery was up to Mighty Moth. There had to be something else.

Briefly lost in thought, the pilot forgot to look where he was flying. When the ship swerved around its axis like a hatchet, resulting in a sea of expletives from the crew added to a hiccup in performance, Mighty Moth went back to crisis mode. A1 had fired a row of missiles in front of the ship to soften up an obstacle, the edge of a giant robotic finger still towering above them all.

A1 groaned, having been yanked from his chair during the impact. "Muppet!"

Everyone in the bridge was shaken to the core. Stingray had ground against the fingertip on its side harder than before, losing two rotors in the process. Not that they needed helicopter blades where they were going, but the change in morale transferred some of A1's nervousness onto Mighty Moth.

The digit they smashed against went down in a sluggish attempt to waste the ship. Another index followed suit. Its trajectory would land the hit front and centre. Losing two of the four rotors made it impossible to manoeuvre effectively. The main engines situated on Stingray's hull were only good at propelling the ship in a straight line, and GUN needed all the thrust it had to catch up with Sonic. Disabling them to drop and roll was out of the question.

Mighty Moth glared at A1. The next part could get ugly, so the pilot tightened his grip on the flight controls.

At that moment, the containment vessel landed on the robot arm. GUN agents were ordered to close their eyes and face the nearest wall. What they would have otherwise experienced was a retina-burning flash that concentrated all the power coursing through Eggman's weapon in one focal point.

It wasn't just electricity that ran rampant in the mammoth robot arm. The entire structure became contaminated with radiation from an unstable reactor held in one piece by the arm's siphoning effect. Whatever Eggman used to control the process failed to account the containment vessel's influence.

The reactor went critical, creating a blast wave that dissipated the arm's base in every direction. It levelled the surrounding mountains while eroding all but the biggest chunks of matter. Hot plasma expanded at the centre, instantaneously scorching whatever remained after the initial blast.

High in the sky, Stingray still fought for survival against the arm as the detonation fought its way upwards. A giant's finger aimed to crush it from above while the explosion pushed the rest of the arm to spread annihilation from below.

Nothing but a fly stuck between a hammer and an anvil. Racing against the elements with their eyes closed, the GUN crew held tight to the nearest bolted handrail, fearfully awaiting the shockwave to arrive from either direction.

Mighty Moth squinted at the control panel. He saw A1's hand extended over the pilot's controls. A1 disabled the engines' protection systems, allowing fuel consumption and heat to go beyond the limits of the ship's structural integrity. Mighty Moth knew well enough the engine room became a fireplace at the first click. Whoever had sought refuge in the loading bay must have experienced third degree burns from contact with the ship's red hot hull.

He didn't have the chance to look behind. At that point, it didn't matter what would happen to the crew. If the pilot decided to eject, he'd die in nuclear fission raging below. So, he prayed for the ship to survive a desperate boost.

The engines sucked in tornadofuls of air to discharge iron-melting momentum. Despite being clad in reinforced flight gear, Mighty Moth felt noisy turbulence. A1 accompanied the discord with laughter.

Should have shot him while you had the chance, the mercenary grumbled to himself.

When his eyes reopened in full, Mighty Moth gasped at what he saw: the ship, all of it, blurred in his eyes. Looking at his own hands, these blurred, too. He could have sworn the fuselage suddenly regained its full colour before blinking into formless semi-transparency.

That's when the robot's finger went right through. Mighty Moth saw it slice into the ship like a knife, but no damage came of it. Why weren't his crewmen screaming in agony? Was he already dead? The engines should have exploded from stress even before Eggman's weapon went through. And A1's daft cackle. All of it looked too cruel, too loud of an end. The thought did run through his mind, but he considered voicing it out tantamount to heresy.

He swallowed a lump in his throat. "C-Chaos Control…"

A1 returned to his regular demeanour upon hearing that. "Shut it, merc! GUN don't need nonsense to win."

Then, he smiled and examined the surrounding area. The robot arm was slowly becoming a cloud of irradiated molten scrap at the forefront of an ionised gas cloud, lethal to everything it touched. To Stingray, it posed little danger as long as the amplifier rings worked. A1 didn't like showcasing state-of-the-art hardware to a foreign mercenary, but he was happy to be the first to test the equipment in the field.

Mighty Moth almost wished GUN had picked someone else as a guinea pig. Flying a nearly see-through assault ship that phased in and out randomly did not look natural. "Is it stable?"

"You don't need to know," A1 retorted. He thought about the reply and considered that Mighty Moth was flying the thing. "As long as we're close to a source of unlimited power, the engines will hold."

A nuclear explosion was as close to unlimited power as it could get, unless A1 meant something else. It would have explained why he insisted on following Sonic into the higher layers of Earth's atmosphere.

What could a pygmy hedgehog do to stop a mighty space rocket if the Master Emerald failed?

Not much, apparently. Sonic wrestled for his life dangling at the lowest stage of the rocket. The force field maintained by the missile he rode to get to the goal continuously sapped the life out of him. Little did he know how much GUN appreciated his sacrifice.

However, like the power they usurped, the sacrifice would have to be ultimate.


	21. Untethered

**Chapter 21: Untethered**

The ground shook from the explosion's incredible force. Mountains cracked on its approach before yielding to the blast wave completely and crumbling to dust. Untraversable canyons levelled with surrounding peaks to create a landscape as ill-fated as the dark side of the Moon. Completely silent and devoid of life, a barren wasteland to serve as a lone testament to the destruction that took place there.

Because those wishing to see in order to believe have seen the last of their lives burst into atoms to be carried by the supersonic wind. An outward tide in the form of a booming disk scattered them on the surface before the vacuum created by the explosion's sheer brutality sucked the dust back inside to rain poison on the terrain. Hapless witnesses became but another contaminated vapour that would deny Bullet Station to man and machine alike.

Eggman's invention, a robot arm big enough to overshadow Monopole's tallest skyscrapers fell to the reaction supposed to fuel its own assembly. Tonnes of metal could not resist annihilation as the fireball at the core expanded. Whatever stood high enough from the initial explosion joined the chaos in the form of molten scrap, thrust into the stratosphere where another battle took place.

Sonic didn't think much about securing his landing on the rocket that held Shadow hostage. He was riding a freaking explosive to reach it. What could go wrong? A loud bang wouldn't have surprised him one bit. Since the early morning, Sonic experienced beatings, blasts, electrocutions and other forms of bodily harm, so an extra dose wouldn't undo his resolve to lunge onto victory.

When his ride fell apart to reveal a ring much like the ones he sought energy from, the hedgehog was, indeed, pleasantly surprised. GUN had finally wised up to using a proper power source for their projectiles. Unfortunately for them, Sonic had an innate ability to collect such rings in the hundreds.

He noticed the difference between normal rings and the GUN variety once the golden shimmer disappeared. The ring then made a familiar sound as if it was being consumed. An electric arc bounced from the ring's surface to Sonic's arm before giving way to a bluish orb, which grew exponentially until it swallowed Sonic whole. The pain started with an innocent _ding_.

A heartbeat later, Sonic found himself gasping for air. The tainted ring made him so tense he could not exhale or even blink. As soon as a muscle would twitch, it would stay that way only to be stiffened further by a stronger impulse. He wasn't paralysed; the life force inside the hero became so agitated he couldn't accommodate even a portion of it.

GUN had him by the Chaos. He had to get out of the field's influence to do anything. An easy task, considering he was clinging to a spacefaring rocket: just let go and gravity would do the rest.

The hero didn't think about the next part, slipping to his doom in the spacecraft's exhaust. While his body refused to respond adequately, Sonic found himself accelerating to the bottom rim. His legs had regained flexibility by then, and the hero knew it was high time to head off to the very top where Shadow was kept. Hopefully, Sonic would avoid the burning sensations rife that close to the rocket's engine with the help of a smooth supersonic dash.

Even though the sun was soon to set and he stood a false move away from being grilled, Sonic retained the sensitivity to shudder as a shadow too edgy to be a cloud covered him. Running would have been his best bet, but Sonic gave in to curiosity one last time.

"What the…"

Stingray hovered by the rocket, an achievement Sonic found unthinkable and very annoying. GUN should have learnt when to give up. The amount of pounding that single assault ship got was close to Sonic's dose, and he ran on a mixture of Chaos and chilli dogs. What did the bumblebee-like metal shell run on?

He wished Tails was with him at that point. Seeing a half-transparent mobile fortress that somehow managed to survive a nuclear blast and multiple engine issues raised more questions than Sonic could answer. The way it behaved was strangely similar to one of Eggman's more advanced robots the hedgehog only heard stories of, E-101 MK II. Tails got eerily excited once he made the discovery about the robot's ability to stay invulnerable for a short amount of time by letting projectiles pass right through. The trick was since reserved to a select few creations piloted by the mad scientist himself.

GUN learning how to emulate the trick en masse was high on Sonic's nightmare list. Right now, he had to face one such machine commanded by a very angry, very desperate man. In a different situation, Sonic would have just let it go. Helping Knuckles and rescuing Shadow sounded much better than whatever GUN had in store for him. Homicide, for example.

Mighty Moth wanted to address Sonic via radio. He didn't care about killing a random hedgehog, but A1 did. Judging by the look in the gunner's eyes, the intent was overwhelming. If there was no way to make everyone happy, it would at least end soon.

The assault ship circled around the rocket, gaining colour in rapid flashes. Sonic knew GUN weren't playing at that point, so he refused to wait for the dance to finish and accelerated on the spot to climb to the rocket's next level.

On his paint-peeling way up, Sonic encountered an obstacle. Unbeknownst to him, Stingray had launched a volley of slow-moving explosives around the rocket. These were descending in a tight ring around the rocket, making it impossible to avoid a hit while clung to the surface. To make matters worse, GUN had prepared more than one ring of hazards.

These were closing in on the hedgehog with their exhaust pipes aimed down. For once, Sonic wished a projectile wasn't too slow. He huffed before performing a feverish dash around the base of the rocket in search of an opening. There really wasn't any, and they've cornered him to the rim. The engine roared beneath it.

Sonic didn't feel like looking further. The nerve-wracking visual got from the nuclear explosion was enough to send chills down his spine despite GUN's attempts to blast him out of the stratosphere with fire and brimstone.

Looking at the ring of fire about to push him off the ledge, Sonic knew he was taking chances. He accelerated in place to perform a short spindash with a jump for a finisher to lead him over the first line of hazards. Landing was the most difficult part: the rocket's even surface forced him to keep the speed up just to stay on the spot. If he applied too much force, he would have cracked the fuel tank, resulting in a catastrophe.

GUN must have realised it was the case, so they flew to his side, aiming a machinegun at his shoes. As the barrel whirred into action, the weapon peppered Sonic's steps to slow him down. Another gun aimed a blinking laser sight at the blue blur; Stingray was bent on stopping him from reaching higher.

For Sonic, doing so was imperative. He could secure a foothold on the four-stage rocket only by reaching the narrow ledge on the next partition. Hopefully, before the secondary engines fired up.

Time was running out along with fuel reserves on the bottom stage. Being stuck so close to the roaring fuel tank, he could hear the chugging noise turn quiet. Sonic had to risk another leap. That one would have to last longer to let the line of hazards pass, as bullets slowed his vertical climb to a crawl.

He thrust into the air, off the ascending platform. Sonic peered through the blue haze caused by his own speed to see the small rockets slowly lose altitude relative to him. The sight teased a grin onto his muzzle while his quills stiffened to alter the hedgehog's trajectory. He'd make it in time. A nice smooth spot waited for him back on the spacecraft.

When he landed, the surface seemed almost too smooth for comfort. His shoes' magic was disabled by gunfire and any attempts to roll into a ball only made him slide down. Sonic's spines went limp on contact instead of providing the traction to zip ahead.

"What the Chaos?!" Sonic hissed out through squeezed teeth.

Bullets flew in smaller portions than before, but he could still see the laser marker tracing his movement. Unless the laser was a real weapon rather than a targeting aid. GUN decided to soften his quills to a feather's texture…and they didn't feel like stopping there.

Stingray materialised at arm's length from the hedgehog for a split second. A man holding a rocket launcher stood in a tiny pillbox cut into the ship's hull. As the launcher fired, Sonic identified the ordnance as a must avoid. He may have been targeted by most arms known to man, but he had a memory good enough to dodge the most troublesome repeats. A1's ring-equipped rockets were on that list.

If he couldn't dodge by moving up because of the laser, Sonic had any other direction at his disposal, so he chose down. A piece of cake as far as the hero was concerned. The missile tried to stay on target, yet it ended up whizzing past Sonic's nose. The hedgehog's manoeuvre was too crafty for a smart bomb. After all, he sneaked past and went angular ever so slightly. The angle got wider over time.

That's when he saw the first stage detach from the rest of the rocket. A massive metal ring turned on its side while the next level drowned it in flame. Sonic couldn't see Stingray anymore. He could barely see anything at all because of the rocket's exhaust. It wasn't his agility that saved him from taking the hit. The rocket simply ditched him like garbage.

And now he was tumbling down into a mushroom cloud. Sonic has never been in a mushroom cloud!

Were it not for being bathed in immense heat already, he would have quivered at the thought. As the hollow cylinder started twirling in the air, more of its surface became exposed to the rocket's flame, taking out a few hazards on its way.

The GUN smart bomb supposed to immobilise him detonated along with its dumb counterparts. It gave Sonic more leeway on the depleted stage. Moving sideways, he could easily avoid the remaining rockets. The trick was finding a way back up.

Sonic didn't have the time to plan, so he decided to do the one thing he did best: be the fastest thing alive. He disregarded the singeing feeling while running laps on his temporary foothold. With enough momentum, he'd cheat gravity and escape the improvised centrifuge.

Each lap made the blue streak behind him grow more intense, nearly drowning out the red and orange born from the fire. On his feverish journey, however, Sonic forgot that he still had hazards to worry about.

One of them was the GUN amplification ring. Despite missing Sonic, the ring still manifested its force field in search of a victim. Smaller rockets fell to its influence and malfunctioned. At the same time, their fuel consumption increased, giving the explosive charges a boost in speed. The ring's blue shine soon became surrounded by a swarm of missiles eager to get out, much like Sonic.

Unlike Sonic, though, the charges didn't care which way they went. They bombarded the rocket's discarded casing along with the hedgehog speeding on top of it. A flurry of misguided missiles pushed Sonic off the metal. It happened so unexpectedly he forgot to roll into a safe ball; a warhead went through the outer cylinder and smashed him right in the gut.

But it did not explode. The gold ring tampered with the rocket's functionality, allowing it to carry the stunned hedgehog high into the air.

Sonic did not expect a more fortunate turn of events. Were it not for the nausea caused by the blow, he would have been genuinely happy. After all, he had used enemy projectiles for fun and transport before. GUN provided heaps of both.

He came to regret the frivolous thought when he realised the force field's effect was temporary.

"Oh, shi-"

The explosion cut him off in a concentrated blast. Sonic rarely gave his opponents an opportunity to strike him front and centre. Feeling pain chew into his flesh to the point of making every muscle fibre jerk was a good reason why.

Before he managed to overcome the daze, another hit threw his mind off the track to consciousness. It pounded him mercilessly again and again, a good taste of what it felt like to receive a series of homing attacks.

A row of missiles derailed by the amplification ring had followed him. Once the first warhead regained functionality to fulfil its purpose, the second rushed for the target while the third refused to wait. An uneven string of bright explosions popped below the spacecraft, contorting the hedgehog's face into an increasingly hopeless grimace.

There was a point when he wished to be someplace else. Sonic knew he was involved for the right cause, but the cause ultimately made him feel alone. He didn't know if any of his closest friends were still alive. Knuckles, Tails, Shadow – their fates seemed to be tethered by a thin string. If Sonic just let it go…

A confusing freeze nibbled on the hero's nose. Sonic couldn't tell if being scorched got his skin to play tricks on him or if something more severe had struck.

His breathing slowed down unintentionally. Sonic forced his eyes open, aware he could lose them to whatever was powerful enough to distort the crawling agony.

Sonic woke up floating through Stingray to a boot heading for his snout in slow motion. He didn't have the willpower to stop it or even close his eyes, so the hero prepared in his mind for humiliation far greater than the physical damage.

The swing went right through his head. Not even a tickle. Instead, Sonic was treated to a detailed view of A3's foot, down to the blood and bone. The hedgehog saw it with his own eyes, passing through like a puff of smoke nearly as flashing and transparent as the whole of Stingray. Everything in the room he penetrated looked ghastly, only partially there. Amongst the debilitating visuals, Sonic felt one more thing, a low vibration. The noise got him to slump, anticipating exhaustion.

In his state, Sonic couldn't immediately pinpoint the reason. While flying up through the assault ship, which moved at an incredible speed on its own, he was invincible to physical attacks, but the trip still churned the life out of him. Just like using Chaos Control would have.

It explained how Stingray moved quickly enough to outrace a supersonic space rocket. Whatever GUN had used to juice their aircraft must have been imbued with enough Chaos energy for a low-grade warp. Judging by the looks everyone stuck in the rear cargo room gave him, the crew had no clue of what was going on, either, making Stingray's actions all the more dangerous and unpredictable.

One thing for certain: the military's ineptitude multiplied by Sonic's experience with Chaos energy allowed him to pass through the aircraft unharmed.

However, neither of those traits saved Sonic from the fact he was clinging to a missile that became contaminated with Stingray's vibrations, which gave the projectile a colossal boost. Having skyscrapers thrown at him sounded appealing compared to the moment the projectile exploded. It caused no harm to the ship, but Sonic didn't have the chance to soak up enough energy himself to avoid the incendiary blast.

Knowing his luck, Sonic already had new hazards to worry about. He needed to get a move on despite being completely denied any footing to change course. Most importantly, he had to stay conscious, a task that gave his head enough flak to reassess the alternatives.

When his face hit something hard and flat, he didn't know what to expect. Sonic had a hunch it would be pain, and he was right. Two needle-like objects lodged themselves between his jaws, awkwardly opening his mouth.

He wanted to spit the mass that had gathered on his tongue, and the thought that a few teeth might have been in the mix didn't bother him at all.

Unlike being beaten to a pulp with a dull object.

"Wake up, Sonic!" it yelled. "Stop being unconscious!"

The next punch made him cough loudly, annoying the object more. Sonic's insolence warranted another thwack on the head until Knuckles decided his blue friend was good to go.

Having rescued the hedgehog's limp body from being ground to bacon grease, the echidna thought he deserved some gratitude. After all, he had to let go of the rocket's nose he was bashing and lose altitude, landing on the middle of the three remaining engine segments with a hedgehog on his back.

That was about to change if GUN had a say. They gave the guardian a thorough treatment leading to only one viable conclusion: boarding the relentless assault ship. Knuckles had a hunch that breaking Stingray in half would stop the bullet spray.

Gliding into an enemy that cockily soared in front of his face sounded like a good plan. He'd just need to detach from the rocket and give it a go. It might even help Sonic forget the echidna punched him a time too many.


	22. Incommunicado

**Chapter 22: Incommunicado**

Knuckles wanted to count to three, but GUN made him too angry to begin. The guardian bumped Sonic quills-first into the rocket, hoping it would fixate his friend, and prepared to lunge at the heavy assault ship in front of him.

Stingray was sure to ramp up the difficulty of moving an inch by switching between bullets and laser fire. GUN wanted to keep the space rocket intact while tormenting the heroes. With their minds busy fending off the annoying projectile spray, the two stowaways acted exactly as planned.

"Come on, echidna. Bring it!" A1 yelled, pressing the trigger to add power to the laser. "Or I'll fry your peanut brain."

The assault ship phased in, becoming fully visible for a short while. Excitement aside, Knuckles had to focus on his attack; falling into a stream of bullets could easily end his attempts to save the Master Emerald. As soon as the red laser beam clicked on to replace the projectiles, Knuckles pushed away from the rocket's wall for a close-up with Stingray.

To his misfortune, something grabbed his hand and crash landed the echidna back on the metal surface. The rapid swing must have sprained his arm, and kissing the rocket on contact poured salt on the wound. Who dared to interrupt his wrath?

Sonic…

"It's a trap, Knuckles! Keep your cool!"

That airhead hedgehog was yelling something at him. Blue Blur's mouth opened wide enough to exhume expletives, yet it wasn't until he manhandled Knuckles to climb that the guardian considered _calming down_ the hedge he'd just saved.

"Get lost!"

A spiked fist tore Sonic off the metal wall, bouncing him to the top of the rocket's midsection.

"What's wrong with you, Knucklehead?!" he screamed. "You'll get yourself k-uh!"

The hedgehog cringed, unable to continue. When his body regained functionality, it tried coping with the bruises experienced during the Chaos-charged flight. His voice went out and Sonic spit the phlegm gathered in his throat. He had no control over the reflex, trying to avoid breathing in the mucus.

Knuckles didn't take being spat at for granted. He wiped the putrid mixture off his face and glared at Sonic.

"I blow them out of the sky and then it's your turn, hedgehog!"

All Sonic saw was a punchy gesture. The wind blew the rest of Knuckles' intent away.

"Don't jump, you idiot! You'll fall right through!" Sonic yelled at the top of his lungs. The hero was getting increasingly more frustrated with Knuckles.

Words didn't help. Knuckles turned away to give Stingray his full attention. Was the echidna deaf or did the altitude foam up his brain? That aircraft could warp away at will. Sonic had to save Knuckles, and the only way he could stop the suicidal glide from happening was ramming straight into his friend. Blue Blur did not like the idea, yet losing his ally in battle was too costly. Knuckles would thank him later, hopefully.

He collided with the echidna at a velocity exceeding Mach 2. Even the most seasoned warrior would have cried out when razor sharp quills ground against his fur. The backlash came later, after an unexpected blink: Knuckles slammed into the rocket again, thrust into another setback by a spinning hedgehog.

They stopped tumbling at the bottom of the central stage. Sonic held onto the ledge with one hand while trying to hoist the fidgeting echidna with the other. The moment Knuckles' arm connected with the rocket's surface, his free fist went for Sonic's face.

Knuckles was done trying to talk sense into Sonic. Whatever came over the speedster would have to go away crushed in bits.

At first, Sonic thought his friend was joshing, but the uppercut cleared the remaining doubt. Sonic quickly recovered from the blow and dashed into Knuckles. He'd get the echidna to communicate with the help of a proper beat down.

GUN watched the events unfold with awe. Two streaks danced around the second section's rim, bouncing into one another and dashing away.

"They're fighting each other…" Mighty Moth whispered. He noticed that A1 had his eyes glued to the scene, hands off the trigger, not shooting anyone. "Why did you stop?"

"Don't interrupt," A1 barked back, revelling in the pain the heroes granted each other. "This is turning out nicely. Take us up, merc. I want hunters outfitted with engineering gear. Chop chop!"

Too busy mauling each other, the heroes forgot who the real enemy was. For a spell, Sonic cared only about keeping Knuckles at bay while climbing. The echidna held both fists firmly against the rocket while taking hits to avoid being pushed down. At the same time, Sonic tried to increase the distance between them because his own sneakers provided poor drag, lacking Knuckles' elevation skills.

They fought in deafening silence, which annoyed the two to no end. It felt as if the other did his best to aggravate, and succeeded at every point. Ugly grimaces replaced taunts while heavy swipes took over the rest of the dialogue. Sonic didn't notice when pushing Knuckles off the rocket became a priority.

Knuckles expected no less from his rival, so he prepared for the worst. He concentrated the Master Emerald's energy in his palms while tracking Sonic's movements. The hedgehog took a long stride up before zipping back with extra velocity. The intensity elongated the blue ball into an egg shape, which seemed to sparkle in the darkening sky.

Eyes closed, the guardian took a very short breath as he flung both arms in front of himself. The puffy gloves pulsated green as they brushed against Sonic's spines. Knuckles was at his limit, squeezing the ball of thunder to unroll. The burning heat bothered him less than crashing through the second level's bottom rim. With both hands busy, he had no way to stop the descent on his own.

The Master Emerald would have to forgive him for the transgression.

Knuckles grunted as he turned his palms outward for Sonic to grind against his spikes. With the Master Emerald's protection, they pressed into Sonic until he had to stop. The blue aura dissipated in front of Knuckles' seething face; the hedgehog was done for. It would take one more thrust and the spikes would go right into the hedgehog's skull. If that wasn't a definitive way to win, he didn't know what was.

That's when the heat got to him. He snapped back to reassess the situation upon seeing the rocket's main engine closing in. Knuckles punched a fist into the bottom section to stop the descent.

It was Sonic's chance to score one for Team Sonic. Free from the double pressure hold, he prepared to nudge Knuckles right off the roaring rocket.

Strange, Sonic thought. I didn't hear the engine earlier.

He concentrated on the sound more. It came from above the thrusters, yet below Stingray. The sound appeared out of thin air unless something distorted the hero's perception.

The sonic boom…

Of course, he couldn't talk sense into Knuckles! They were travelling at supersonic speed to begin with, and GUN had exploited the miscommunication to the fullest. Stingray found an opportunity to reach the rocket's nose to fix the damage Knuckles had caused. By the look of things, the military were tenacious enough to escort the rocket all the way to orbit, and they'd fight for every iota.

The tactic nearly toppled both heroes off the spacecraft, and Knuckles still wanted to beat Sonic to a pulp. They have gone too far to use subtle methods, so Sonic hoped a kick in the ear would help Knuckles realise they were still a team.

Having experienced a beating earlier, Knuckles probably felt but a pinch. He certainly heard it coming along with a robotic voice.

"Communicator online."

He had forgotten all about Tails' device. Just when he was about to knock Sonic out, he heard the hedgehog's breathing. It sounded distant even though Sonic was right there, smiling like an idiot that he was.

"You almost got us killed!" the echidna chastised him.

"Missed your grating self, Knux!"

Their feet were dangling in the air, something they had to change promptly. Both could discuss the mutual embarrassment later because the real enemy still played them for fools. Knuckles wanted to meet GUN with a doubled load of smashing, but Sonic needed to do some explaining first.

Knuckles knew they were on the right track when Sonic helped him up onto the bottom ledge. The metal rim vibrated under their weight; the scuffle took its toll on how much more the rocket could handle, and the circumstances weren't going to turn easier. The heroes have lost footing while the rocket rose into the cold mesosphere.

Sonic pointed at Stingray twirling around the rocket's nose. "That ship can use weak Chaos Control. We need to work as a team to outsmart them."

"Could have said so a little earlier!"

The hedgehog hoped Knuckles understood it all even if the echidna didn't want to admit Sonic saved him from sure doom. GUN were deploying more turbine-shaped hazards on the rocket's surface, so they had to act as a team to make it to the top.

"Just grab my hand!" Sonic exclaimed. There was a distance between the two, and Knuckles looked weary. "Trust me. I have an idea."

He didn't like the idea of Sonic saying that, but he went for it, anyway. Knuckles squeezed Sonic's fingers together and turned serious while the hedgehog grinned. Before he knew it, Knuckles found himself somersaulting up. Sonic continued the motion until they blurred together into a wide ring of blue and red. Knuckles' climbing skills coupled with Sonic's speed got them to reach the rocket's midsection in no time.

"Got a name for this move?" Knuckles asked.

"No. I'll ask Tails to make one up!" Sonic smiled at first, surprised that the tag team trick worked on the first try. Then, he thought about his own words and drooped.

While Knuckles also felt the emotional weight, he knew Sonic needed all the encouragement to face GUN for the last time. "He's fine. The kid's got brains."

Sonic's muscled tensed in an instant. The tag team ball gained speed as it tore through the first line of slowing hazards. What would have easily blown one of them off the rocket was no match for their combined effort. Stingray circled the spacecraft one more time to dump the next line of hazards and held its distance, weapons primed to intercept.

"And they've got the brawn…" Sonic huffed.

Single hazards burdened Knuckles with adding more pressure when puncturing the rocket's outer layer for grip. Discomfort was easy to avoid despite Sonic's persistence on cutting through the slow drones. He wanted GUN to see how their influence dwindled. If the military knew what was best, they'd flee from Sonic while they had the chance.

The message Stingray had in return inspired more grief. With two rings of hazards remaining, it ordered the stopping rockets to turn and begin circling the spacecraft. Sonic and Knuckles suffered a hit as they tore through the lower encirclement, but the explosives' weak force only gave them more hope.

Low oxygen density reduced the charges' effectiveness, prompting GUN to clump the remaining hazards together for a crash course. The heroes didn't have the manoeuvrability to avoid the swarm standing in their way.

A frontal hit barely warmed Sonic's quills, but when the rockets got sucked into the tag team ball, the hedgehog quaked. Four of them exploded in a chain reaction, straining the bond between Sonic and Knuckles. It wasn't until Knuckles' spikes punctured an explosive instead of the spacecraft's casing that the two felt in danger.

The distance between their hands grew along with the time they'd need to reach the rocket's nose. Knuckles had a black mark on his muzzle. The blow put him in a worse condition than Sonic, who insisted on helping.

"No. Get to the top," the guardian intervened. "They can't target us both."

Sonic refused, and he was right to do so. Stingray materialised for a split second to pop no less than ten ramjets equipped with flashbang grenades. These caused enough chaos to dazzle anyone in GUN's path. Both heroes found themselves clutching to the connection between the two top fuel segments. Moving forward was out of the question: the excessive bombardment made it impossible to navigate. Eyes and ears mislead the feet at every step.

That's when Sonic felt his hold on Knuckles weaken. The echidna was up to something. Sonic wanted to see what it was, but the blinding white gave him only episodic images of Knuckles trying to ascend and slide back down, scorched and bummed by Stingray's arsenal.

A1 must been having a party on the assault ship's bridge. The two stowaways were heading for certain death at this rate. Lacking senses to guide them, neither Sonic nor Knuckles could fight back. At the same time, the weakening gravity coaxed their bodies to exert great effort just to stay attached to the rocket. Exhaustion would take the best of them, or they'd suffocate. Regardless, blowing them to bits was never out of the question. Given the trouble they gave him on the mission, that final bonus option looked very appealing. He'd just need to tickle them to let go and the environment would do the rest.

"Phasing in, merc," he ordered. A1 reached for his missile launcher. The amplifier ring hidden inside the projectile had the punch to make Sonic's final moments unforgettable.

It was hard to communicate in those conditions. Knuckles resorted to hitting Sonic just to get a living reaction out of him. When he got a hold of the hedgehog's attention, all Sonic could hear was a whisper even though Knuckles screamed every word into his ear.

"I trusted you, Sonic. Now, you trust me. See that thing? It won't stop unless we stop it, and I know how."

Sonic shook his head at the words. Taking a dive at what you cannot touch was suicide. He would not allow a friend to do such a thing. "Knuckles, I-"

The guardian treated his cheek to a sobering blow. Having made a choice, Knuckles had no need for Sonic's hesitation. "Listen to me! They're protecting the rocket, so they can't use anything heavy this close. And they must stop warping to fire."

"I don't think this is a good idea." Sonic still had second thoughts, making it difficult for Knuckles to keep his temper in check.

"Got any better ideas?" Knuckles asked. Sonic didn't react, prompting him to continue. "Just give me a boost."

Knuckles' stupidly brave demeanour rubbed off on Sonic. Even if he didn't like Knuckles' plan, the hedgehog wanted to stay supportive of his friend. He concentrated on the surroundings, trying to pick Stingray's distant boom out in the explosive cacophony caused by ramjets.

"See you at the top!"

That said, the hedgehog pulled himself together to give Knuckles what he wanted, Thunder Shoot, Sonic-style. It sent a charged red ball on a collision course with GUN's assault ship that used the heroes' confusion to get a lock on Sonic in the meantime.

"So long, hedgehog," A1 hissed as he pressed the trigger. A tainted ring-equipped missile thrust towards Sonic, who remained clung to the space rocket.

Knuckles' bravado amused the field commander. Sensors picked up the destructive furry projectile long before it could touch the ship's armour. "That's how your species goes extinct… Phase out!"

Stingray erased the colour from its corporeal form in an instant, leaving merely a transparent shell. As soon as Knuckles would fly through, they'd blast him with everything they had without harming the mission's objective. Working as a team, the heroes still played into GUN's hands.

On his decisive flight, Knuckles chanted to gather strength. "I am one with the Master Emerald. I am one with the controller. The controller serves to unify the chaos."

The crimson ball penetrated the assault ship without ever touching it just like Sonic had predicted. Stingray's crew watched Knuckles fly right through: Freak cowered in fear, his finger pointed at the echidna's exit point while A1 clicked through a row of missile pods, popping their protective shields before firing. Mighty Moth was slouched in the pilot's seat, not paying attention to Knuckles' flight. He had no reason to; Knuckles buzzed through Stingray's bowels and damaged nothing. Just like the guardian intended.

Knuckles unrolled a breath above the assault ship. His eyes beamed with determination while his body gathered all the energy it could, not refusing aid from the controller. He inhaled deeply to unleash a force he used only in critical situations.

"Maximum Heat Knuckles Attack!"

The hot vapour surrounding him expanded in every direction, giving Knuckles the momentum to fly back into the assault ship, piercing it again and again while an increasing line of red banded behind him. Less than a second later, Stingray was needled with colourful strands as ghastly as the ship's transparency.

Knuckles defied the laws of physics known to man by continuing to swim through the assault ship like an eel through water. He had to fall off. He couldn't make another turn. It made no sense to the soldiers, and they became worried.

Soon, they realised the validity of such worry. Colour started leaking into the surroundings, dragging Stingray into the physical realm. Mighty Moth took it as a cue to steer the ship away, but his attempts were interrupted by the incensed field commander.

"Phase out! Phase the hell out!"

"Engines are yellow…" the mercenary replied. Steering failed to respond, so he cringed in anticipation.

It came in the form of fireballs created by a single punch. They followed Knuckles' past trail, heating up and damaging everything in their curved path. The people inside the loading bay screamed in agony, concerning no one on the bridge.

"And they are gone," Mighty Moth concluded. He asked Jojo 1 to put magnetic boots on and assess the damage on the outside. If the ship kept refusing to respond to input, they would crash on irradiated soil.

"You'll be gone if you don't pull us up chop chop!" A1 barked. He knew it was futile, and the pilot didn't say a word back. Stingray was finished, angering the field commander further. "Enabling fail-safe..."

Mighty Moth saw Knuckles hitch a ride on a ramjet still trying to hinder the echidna's efforts while the missile fired by A1 stopped trailing Sonic to reach the spacecraft's nose instead. At least, the descent would take longer now that they were 5.2 tonnes lighter. The two hunters the ship had released weighed less than that, but he didn't want to think about it, lest A1 would find out. They needed to concentrate on urgent repairs before Stingray fell to the ground, out of power.

The field commander raged inside despite his communiqué sounding nothing out of the ordinary. "Everyone with engineer training – report to the bridge. Those failing to do so will be considered women and or children to be prepared for immediate evac into outer space."

A buzz on Mighty Moth's satellite phone brought a bitter smile to his face. "I see this is what GUN call _Mission Accomplished_."


	23. Parasite

**Chapter 23: Parasite**

"Whoah!" Sonic twirled on his feet, trying to dodge the one explosive he had yet to find a suitable counter for.

The GUN amplification ring sealed inside the missile had the potential to cripple anyone imbued with Chaos energy. For Sonic, being squeezed dry at a breath-taking altitude meant more than a rapid encounter with the blue planet below. He would abandon Shadow and a part of the Master Emerald to burn in the nearest star. No pressure.

He coughed, wishing the atmosphere hadn't gotten thin so quickly. Sonic had prior experience in low orbit, but prolonged exposure to the vacuum of space didn't make his lungs feel any better. The gas mask he got from a GUN engineer back in Bullet Station came in handy even though Sonic had no clue how well it functioned after staying with him during the rough ascension.

With luck, he'd have a chance to try it out. The missile didn't need to hit the hero to fulfil its purpose, which coaxed Sonic to blaze ahead at full speed. The blue streak that always followed him waved as Sonic had trouble keeping balance on the spacecraft's smooth outer wall.

It didn't stop him from reaching the final stage. Sonic saw the sparks coming from a hunter's arc welder at the rocket's nose. Before he mustered up the energy to disable the drone, however, the missile whizzed between his quills, ignoring him. The event took Sonic off guard, and he would have lost a level of progress had he not grabbed onto the top ledge. Sonic used the moment to examine the situation.

All things considered, it was good. Very good.

Stingray erupted in flames and started sinking into the distance while Knuckles banged up a ramjet to bring him back onto the rocket. The tiny plane tried to shake him off by throwing flashbangs, but they went off too far to make a difference.

Good old Knucklehead did it! Sonic had his doubts, and yet the guardian survived the close shave. Having no more Chaos Control-capable metal bumblebees in sight meant the rest of the mission would be a breeze. All that stood in his way were a pair of dumb hunter robots. They didn't even have weapons, just a welder arm to repair the damage Knuckles had caused on his first visit. They'd crack Shadow's prison open like an egg.

Sonic showed a thumbs up and flashed a grin at his incoming friend. The facial expression melted away faster than Knuckles could reach the rocket, though.

"Look out!" Sonic yelled into his communicator.

Another flash, a powerful and destructive one was heading their way. GUN may have lost a manned assault ship, but they still had a satellite fleet able to level entire cities. They had no qualms about wasting the energy on frying a pair of stowaways.

The wide beam did not touch the rocket's surface, albeit it gave Sonic a stark opportunity to reflect on his smugness. The heroes would have time to party when all was said and done. Now, they had an ultimate hedgehog to rescue. Sonic waited for the beam to power down before he found it safe enough to move. The precision GUN's targeting system was capable of in space made no location outside the rocket's casing a haven.

Knuckles experienced it first-hand: the very beam forced him to bail off his ramjet that met an untimely end as space debris. Momentum alone guided him towards the rocket. The nose he wanted to crash into went beyond his reach, leaving him to desperately thump against the bottom stage. Sonic would get to skim the punching cream again…

"Leave some for me!" Knuckles cried out as he climbed.

"Not a chance." Sonic grinned, sneaking up to the hunter that stood outside the rocket.

The poor thing was still busy welding. It looked completely consumed by the action, so Sonic poked the robot a few times to get its attention. No luck.

Sonic glanced down to check how much time he had until Knuckles made it to the top. The echidna still had a way to go, allowing Sonic to take a more direct approach to challenging the robot. He climbed it for a coy wave in front of its head. The move did not go undetected. The robot didn't fidget, though, too fixated on repairs. It was almost done, and there must have been another welder bot on the inside.

The hero sighed, somewhat longing for a proper encounter, and pushed the machine off the ledge with a single poke. The robot's boosters switched on in an instant, placing the hunter back where it was. Sonic had to give it points for persistency, but it stood in his way, so to the scrapheap it would go.

A homing attack crushed the robot's welder arm, enabling the machine's aggressive mode. The hunter tried to grab Sonic with its second arm, and failed as soon as the hedgehog dismantled its legs by sweeping them off in a spin.

Its metal carcass tumbled down, barely missing Knuckles.

"I left some for you!" Sonic yelled down, forgetting that Knuckles would have heard him through the communicator, anyway.

"That's not what I meant!"

Sonic snickered, having received a dose of confidence, and spindashed into the loose panel the hunters were repairing. The metal plate burst into pieces at the impact, surprising the last robot standing. Its head turned at the welder, the metal bits floating in vacuum and the blue hedgehog that came uninvited.

The guest used the robot's confusion to inspect the environment. The space inside the rocket's nose was a tad cramped, but Sonic would have no trouble doing laps thanks to there being no obstructions save for a black, red and yellow monolith in the middle. It looked very heavy and hard to puncture, so it must have been placed as the final line of defence.

Without a doubt, the Master Emerald was hidden inside. Sonic could feel its power seeping through microscopic cracks. The emerald's higher than normal distortion field lifted any doubts Sonic's friend would also be there.

He walked up to the monolith only to be surprised by a pathetic swipe from the hunter drone. GUN could have switched it off by now. Sonic was strong enough to trash one in his sleep with all of his limbs tied behind his back.

"Come-hither," Sonic taunted as he stood perfectly still.

The robot lunged at him only to maul through empty space. It turned around, searching for the intruder.

"Who's dumb, slow and too slow?"

The hunter's head lost half of its volume at those words. A weight increase indicated that the offender was latched onto the machine's armour. Its arms were not flexible enough to grab Sonic, so the drone reversed the polarity of its electric welder and let the spark roam all over the hunter's body, shocking Sonic in more ways than one.

"Alright, that was clever, but you're still too slow!"

He'd show the robot where it belonged, and it would take Sonic no effort to buzz right through the chest plate. The hero grinned, expecting the fizzle of dying electronics to warm his fur. The feedback he got from the robot was less than ideal: the hedgehog rebounded, barely scratching the armour.

Sonic took a second leap to repeat the attack, and got the same result, as if it was one of those shielded hunters. The trick in defeating one was hitting it in the back, which Sonic attempted to do by spinning around the robot in a tight circle. No machine could turn as quickly as a supersonic hedgehog.

At the count to three, he buzzsawed to the foe's exposed rear. The hunter put up its arms just in time to stop him. Knuckles had surprised Sonic by making the hedgehog grind against spikes before. A robot wouldn't have a chance at doing the same because Sonic was the one to switch direction this time.

Rather than spin forward, Sonic started rolling sideways until his quills grazed at the robot's hands, halving both appendages at once.

The drone moved away, sparks flying, in hope of tracking down Sonic, who disappeared yet again. The tracking system didn't take long to produce a result: the hedgehog was right behind him. A homing attack interrupted the robot's power supply.

"And that's that." Sonic huffed. Knuckles was taking his time to get inside, so it wouldn't hurt to try the monolith's resistance out.

Sonic found his cheek rammed into the solid metal box prematurely. The damaged hunter was trying to sandwich him even though Sonic had seen it fall down without power.

It took some effort to push it away. Then again, if the robot wanted effort, Sonic wouldn't hold back and launch it into deep space. He circled the central structure many times to gather the speed for a thrust strong enough to blast a man to the moon. The ringing he got in his ears was proof of the blow's effectiveness.

Gone with the solar wind, Sonic thought to himself.

To his misfortune, the hunter was still inside the rocket's nose. Its boosters produced more exhaust than ten Chaos Drives could. The moment it got over the opposing force, the robot blasted back towards Sonic, using its body as a battering ram.

Sonic rolled on the floor prone until the robot stopped boosting. The hunter wouldn't get off, lying powerlessly atop Sonic, so the hedgehog prepared for a kick off.

Instead, a pair of clawed hands burst through the robot's torso and grabbed Sonic. As the robot powered up to rise, the sharp metal claws repeatedly banged the hedgehog against the hunter's armour. Sonic found it difficult to escape the strangle hold.

The claws differed in structure from the rest of the robot, a revelation that prompted Sonic to fidget as hard as he could. There was no way he'd be caught dead like that.

Help would have been sweet, and yet Knuckles was nowhere in sight.

"Knuckles!" he exclaimed.

The rocket trembled in response. Sonic could feel a strong vibration coming from its bottom, and it wasn't pretty. Before he knew it, the rocket malfunctioned, propelling both the robot and Sonic to fly into the monolith. Bolts scattered away from the hunter and the Sonic felt a boiling sensation where the claws were. Not a scratch on the central structure, though.

Sonic wanted to know what happened until another vibration brought the captor and the captive to smash into the floor. The hero didn't pay attention when Tails' was talking about rocket science, but he knew that being chucked around was a bad sign.

His communicator beeped in, still functional. "A little busy! Ugh! Stop that!"

Sure as sound, the echidna was distracted more than plain busy. Thankfully, the hunter also seemed distracted. Sonic seized the opportunity to break free and land a sizzling cut across the robot's frame.

"Still too slow!" Sonic exclaimed, intending to laugh. A gasp came out. He was suffocating.

The hero frantically searched for his air tube. Space just wasn't cool about hedgehogs. He found the container blowing the contents out as it swirled in vacuum close to the ceiling. Sonic took a long jump, hands out for a grab, and clenched his teeth around the container's rubber nozzle. He took a few greedy breaths before tucking the object away.

He then looked down to check on his handiwork, a pile of scrap that wasn't there.

Sonic's eyes darted in all directions as he saw the reason: the rocket took its passengers out for another jolt. This one brushed Sonic against the nose's outer shell all the way to his entry point. Sonic had to hold on to the sharp edge his own quills made as he clung for his life in merciless vacuum.

While attempting to pull back inside, Sonic got a glimpse of the outside world. The rocket's lowest tier was in shambles and the craft's course was shifting constantly. It wasn't until Sonic saw a belt of artificial satellites in front of the rocket that he pulled back inside.

"Knuckles?"

Silence.

The situation turned disturbing too quickly for Sonic's liking. He had to go look for Knuckles, but he didn't want to leave the top of the rocket unguarded. They were going to hit a bunch of satellites at any moment, which gave Sonic very little time to undo the Master Emerald's heavy case.

He hurried over to the floor and spotted the disabled hunter that had given him trouble. It floated above the chamber's surface according to the rocket's variable thrust. The movement annoyed Sonic, prompting him to eject the scrap into outer space. He lined it up with the entry hole and kicked the scrap.

Big mistake. A claw rose from the debris to catch Sonic's foot in action. Another claw joined it and Sonic got to experience first-hand horror about a suspicion that came true.

Metal Sonic rose from the hunter's ashes. Like a parasite, it discarded the host's mangled parts, treating Sonic to an unforgettable experience. This robot was not going to let go.

"H-how!?" Sonic cried out.

His copy had no trouble intercepting the transmission. "Don't know? Too slow," Metal droned out, putting a squeeze on Sonic's foot.

The idle red eyes could not convey how much satisfaction Sonic's contortions gave him. One of the claws moved up from the sneaker, scraping the fur clean as it headed for the nearest joint. If steel could tingle, Metal would have been itching to snap the organic hedgehog's leg in half.

He'd record every second and tease Sonic's vitals to be at their limit for when the real pain would begin. "Priority two: kill hedgehog."

The derisive statement brought insufficient results. Sonic smirked despite his eyelids quivering. He even managed to make a sound. "Nice to see Eggman's still pulling your strings."

Metal's fingers scraped deeper as they moved. His eyes fixated on Sonic, but the robot didn't need to see to know that colour seeped underneath his lethal touch. Sonic was bleeding already, and Metal was only getting started.

"Priority one: independence."

Sonic found his cue. As soon as Metal transmitted the message, he smashed Metal's head with his free foot. Although it didn't spin out of control as Sonic had intended, the strain was sufficient to make room between the two.

The hero reached for his injured leg, carefully eyeing the opponent while examining the wound. The cuts would slow him down somewhat. Though, something else hurt the hedgehog more. If Metal wasn't lying, which, in Sonic's opinion, he was perfectly capable of, then, running off into space somehow made Metal more independent.

Sonic positioned himself next to the monolith and patted it to agitate the robot. "What's in it for you, bolt brain? Huh?"

"Recovery of alloys is crucial to complete priority one objective."

Metal didn't give him any chance to read into the words. The robot rushed at Sonic head-first, resulting in two blue buzzsaws grating against each other as they clashed. Both were determined to keep it up until the heat from the collision forced them to part.

Sonic growled at the audacity. "Why are you fighting me, then? We're after the same thing!"

"Multitasking. Is. Fun."

It was Sonic's turn to attack. To think Eggman made Metal to resemble Sonic in every way… Something must have gone wrong during production. The evil genius always had a motive to cause untold chaos. The reason was normally asinine like world domination or building theme parks, but it was there! Metal wanted to cause harm just because he could! The kind of artificial wickedness made Sonic's blood boil, and the robot would get to find out how much.

The lightning standoff ended as quickly as it began, with each combatant exerting a lot of effort to stand up to his peer. Metal caught Sonic's punch while the hero clutched the robot's arm, neither willing to reduce the pressure, neither possessing the power to finish off a single blow. If speed or strength was a factor, they were evenly matched. Thus, Blue Blur went for something absent from a robot's repertoire.

Sonic diverted his eyes from Metal and grinned. "Hey, look up! It's priority one-point-five!"

He knew it would work. It always worked. Eggman wasn't stupid at building robots, yet he had a killer penchant for curiosity. Metal's attention routine skipped a retort to turn the head up. He saw nothing extraordinary in the dark insides of the rocket's nose. Plenty of static and a dormant force field lay there. Not even a fractional priority.

Which made the operational pain all the more humiliating. Sonic jumped on the spot while keeping their arms locked for a flick at Metal's needle nose. The silvery dagger floated towards the chamber's top quicker than the robotic hedgehog could process it. Metal didn't really need a pointy thing on his faceplate. Then again, he just got damaged by a meat bag, who continued wasting his breath on nonsense.

"You wouldn't know fun even if it hit you in the face. Just like that."

Metal let the fool go and added power to the magnets at his feet. The nose entered the obscured force field, acting as a catalyst. Before they knew it, the spherical shape at the top expanded, glowing bright blue while it swallowed more emptiness in its way.

His magnets went full power when the force field touched the monolith. The shine caused a physical vibration in the rocket's casing strong enough to deafen Sonic. It was the least of the hero's worries because the menacing shape elongated and sparked until it became that of a funnel. As it grew, Sonic realised why GUN let the final missile go past him. The military wanted to mix a Chaos amplifier ring with the power of the controller.

That's when the field touched down on the monolith, resulting in a silent pop that shattered the containment structure's top layer into very agitated pieces. The shards proceeded to swarm inside the chamber at an increasing speed as if a vacuum much deeper than space was pulling them in. Flooring material clattered under Sonic's feet in response to the residual Chaos energy waking from its dormancy.

"Just like…that."

Sonic had to destroy the ring. There was no telling what would happen if the controller went out of control.


End file.
